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diff --git a/75908-0.txt b/75908-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..05eaef9 --- /dev/null +++ b/75908-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4635 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75908 *** + + + + + +Music and Bad Manners + + + + + _By THE SAME AUTHOR_ + + + MUSIC AFTER THE GREAT WAR + + + + + Music + and Bad Manners + + _Carl Van Vechten_ + + + [Illustration] + + New York Alfred A. Knopf + MCMXVI + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY + ALFRED A. KNOPF + + _All rights reserved_ + + + PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + + + +_To my Father_ + + + + +Contents + + + PAGE + + MUSIC AND BAD MANNERS 11 + + MUSIC FOR THE MOVIES 43 + + SPAIN AND MUSIC 57 + + SHALL WE REALIZE WAGNER’S IDEALS? 135 + + THE BRIDGE BURNERS 169 + + A NEW PRINCIPLE IN MUSIC 217 + + LEO ORNSTEIN 229 + + + + +Music and Bad Manners + + + + +Music and Bad Manners + + +Singers, musicians of all kinds, are notoriously bad mannered. The +storms of the Titan, Beethoven, the petty malevolences of Richard +Wagner, the weak sulkiness of Chopin (“Chopin in displeasure was +appalling,” writes George Sand, “and as with me he always controlled +himself it was as if he might die of suffocation”) have all been +recalled in their proper places in biographies and in fiction; but +no attempt has been made heretofore, so far as I am aware, to lump +similar anecdotes together under the somewhat castigating title I +have chosen to head this article. Nor is it alone the performer who +gives exhibitions of bad manners. (As a matter of fact, once an +artist reaches the platform he is on his mettle, at his best. At home +he--or she--may be ruthless in his passionate display of floods of +“temperament.” I have seen a soprano throw a pork roast on the floor +at dinner, the day before a performance of Wagner’s “consecrational +festival play,” with the shrill explanation, “Pork before _Parsifal_!” +On the street he may shatter the clouds with his lightnings--as, +indeed, Beethoven is said to have done--but on the stage he becomes, +as a rule, a superhuman being, an interpreter, a mere virtuoso. Of +course, there are exceptions.) Audiences, as well, may be relied upon +to behave badly on occasion. An auditor is not necessarily at his best +in the concert hall. He may have had a bad dinner, or quarrelled with +his wife before arriving. At any rate he has paid his money and it +might be expected that he would make some demonstration of disapproval +when he was displeased. The extraordinary thing is that he does not +do so oftener. On the whole it must be admitted that audiences remain +unduly calm at concerts, that they are unreasonably polite, indeed, to +offensively inadequate or downright bad interpretations. I have sat +through performances, for example, of the Russian Symphony Society in +New York when I wondered how my fellow-sufferers could display such +fortitude and patience. When _Prince Igor_ was first performed at the +Metropolitan Opera House the ballet, danced in defiance of all laws of +common sense or beauty, almost compelled me to throw the first stone. +The parable saved me. Still one doesn’t need to be without sin to sling +pebbles in an opera house. And it is a pleasure to remember that there +have been occasions when audiences did speak up! + +In those immeasurably sad pages in which Henry Fothergill Chorley +describes the last London appearance of Giuditta Pasta, recalling +Pauline Viardot’s beautiful remark (she, like Rachel, was hearing the +great dramatic soprano for the first time), “It is like the _Cenacolo_ +of Da Vinci at Milan--a wreck of a picture, but the picture is the +greatest picture in the world!” this great chronicler of the glories +of the opera stage recalls the attitude of the French actress: “There +were artists present, who had then, for the first time, to derive some +impression of a renowned artist--perhaps, with the natural feeling that +her reputation had been exaggerated.--Among these was Rachel--whose +bitter ridicule of the entire sad show made itself heard throughout the +whole theatre, and drew attention to the place where she sat--one might +even say, sarcastically enjoying the scene.” + +Chorley’s description of an incident in the career of the dynamic Mme. +Mara, a favourite in Berlin from 1771 to 1780, makes far pleasanter +reading: “On leave of absence being denied to her when she wished +to recruit her strength by a visit to the Bohemian _baden_, the +songstress took the resolution of neglecting her professional duties, +in the hope of being allowed to depart as worthless. The Czarovitch, +Paul the First of Russia, happened about that time to pay a visit to +Berlin; and she was announced to appear in one of the grand parts. She +pretended illness. The King sent her word, in the morning of the day, +that she was to get well and sing her best. She became, of course, +worse--could not leave her bed. Two hours before the opera began, a +carriage, escorted by eight soldiers, was at her door, and the captain +of the company forced his way into her chamber, declaring that their +orders were to bring her to the theatre, dead or alive. ‘You cannot; +you see I am in bed.’ ‘That is of little consequence,’ said the +obdurate machine; ‘we will take you, bed and all.’ There was nothing +for it but to get up and go to the theatre; dress, and resolve to sing +without the slightest taste or skill. And this Mara did. She kept her +resolution for the whole of the first act, till a thought suddenly +seized her that she might be punishing herself in giving the Grand-Duke +of Russia a bad opinion of her powers. A _bravura_ came; and she burst +forth with all her brilliancy, in particular distinguishing herself by +a miraculous shake, which she sustained, and swelled, and diminished, +with such wonderful art as to call down more applause than ever.” This +was the same Mara who walked out of the orchestra at a performance of +_The Messiah_ at Oxford rather than stand during the singing of the +_Hallelujah Chorus_. + +In that curious series of anecdotes which Berlioz collected under +the title, “Les Grotesques de la Musique,” I discovered an account +of a performance of a _Miserere_ of Mercadante at the church of San +Pietro in Naples, in the presence of a cardinal and his suite. The +cardinal several times expressed his pleasure, and the congregation at +two points, the _Redde Mihi_ and the _Benigne fac, Domine_, broke in +with applause and insisted upon repetitions! Berlioz also describes +a rehearsal of Grétry’s _La Rosière de Salency_ at the Odéon, when +that theatre was devoted to opera. The members of the orchestra were +overcome with a sense of the ridiculous nature of the music they were +performing and made strange sounds the while they played. The _chef +d’orchestre_ attempted to keep his face straight, and Berlioz thought +he was scandalized by the scene. A little later, however, he found +himself laughing harder than anybody else. The memory of this occasion +gave him the inspiration some time later of arranging a concert of +works of this order (in which, he assured himself, the music of the +masters abounded), without forewarning the public of his purpose. +He prepared the programme, including therein this same overture of +Grétry’s, then a celebrated English air _Arm, Ye Brave_, a “sonata +_diabolique_” for the violin, the quartet from a French opera in which +this passage occurred: + + “J’aime assez les Hollandaises, + Les Persanes, les Anglaises, + Mais je préfère des Françaises + L’esprit, la grâce et la gaîté,” + +an instrumental march, the finale of the first act of an opera, a fugue +on _Kyrie Eleison_ from a Requiem Mass in which the music suggested +anything but the words, variations for the bassoon on the melody of +_Au Clair de la Lune_, and a symphony. Unfortunately for the trial +of the experiment the rehearsal was never concluded. The executants +got no further than the third number before they became positively +hysterical. The public performance was never given, but Berlioz assures +us that the average symphony concert audience would have taken the +programme seriously and asked for more! It may be considered certain +that in his choice of pieces Berlioz was making game of some of his +contemporaries.... + +In all the literature on the subject of music there are no more +delightful volumes to be met with than those of J. B. Weckerlin, called +“Musiciana,” “Nouveau Musiciana,” and “Dernier Musiciana.” These books +are made up of anecdotes, personal and otherwise. From Bourdelot’s +“Histoire de la Musique” Weckerlin culled the following: “An equerry +of Madame la Dauphine asked two of the court musicians to his home at +Versailles for dinner one evening. They sang standing opposite the +mantelpiece, over which hung a great mirror which was broken in six +pieces by the force of tone; all the porcelain on the buffet resounded +and shook.” Weckerlin also recalls a caprice of Louis XI, who one day +commanded the Abbé de Baigne, who had already invented many musical +instruments, to devise a harmony out of pigs. The Abbé asked for some +money, which was grudgingly given, and constructed a pavilion covered +with velvet, under which he placed a number of pigs. Before this +pavilion he arranged a white table with a keyboard constructed in such +a fashion that the displacing of a key stuck a pig with a needle. The +sounds evoked were out of the ordinary, and it is recorded that the +king was highly diverted and asked for more. Auber’s enthusiasm for his +own music, usually concealed under an indifferent air, occasionally +expressed itself in strange fashion. Mme. Damoreau recounted to +Weckerlin how, when the composer completed an air in the middle of the +night, even at three or four o’clock in the morning, he rushed to her +apartment. Dragging a pianoforte to her bed, he insisted on playing the +new song over and over to her, while she sang it, meanwhile making the +changes suggested by this extraordinary performance. + +More modern instances come to mind. Maria Gay is not above nose-blowing +and expectoration in her interpretation of Carmen, physical acts in the +public performance of which no Spanish cigarette girl would probably +be caught ashamed. Yet it may be doubted if they suit the music of +Bizet, or the Meilhac and Halévy version of Merimée’s creation.... A +story has been related to me--I do not vouch for the truth of it--that +during a certain performance of _Carmen_ at the Opéra-Comique in Paris +a new singer, at some stage in the proceedings, launched that dreadful +French word which Georges Feydeau so ingenuously allowed his heroine to +project into the second act of _La Dame de chez Maxim_, with a result +even more startling than that which attended Bernard Shaw’s excursion +into the realms of the expletive in his play, _Pygmalion_. It is +further related of this performance of _Carmen_, which is said to have +sadly disturbed the “traditions,” that in the excitement incident to +her début the lady positively refused to allow Don José to kill her. +Round and round the stage she ran while the perspiring tenor tried in +vain to catch her. At length, the music of the score being concluded, +the curtain fell on a Carmen still alive; the _salle_ was in an uproar. + +I find I cannot include Chaliapine’s Basilio in my list of bad mannered +stage performances, although his trumpetings into his handkerchief +disturbed many of New York’s professional writers. _Il Barbiere_ is +a farcical piece, and the music of Rossini hints at the Rabelaisian +humours of the dirty Spanish priest. In any event, it was the finest +interpretation of the rôle that I have ever seen or heard and, with +the splendid ensemble (Mme. Sembrich was the Rosina, Mr. Bonci, the +count, and Mr. Campanari, the Figaro), the comedy went with such joyous +abandon (the first act finale to the accompaniment of roars of laughter +from the stalls) that I am inclined to believe the performance could +not be bettered in this generation. + +The late Algernon St. John Brenon used to relate a history about Emma +Eames and a recalcitrant tenor. The opera was _Lohengrin_, I believe, +and the question at issue was the position of a certain couch. Mme. +Eames wished it placed here; the tenor there. As always happens +in arguments concerning a Wagnerian music-drama, at some point the +Bayreuth tradition was invoked, although I have forgotten whether that +tradition favoured the soprano or her opponent in this instance. In +any case, at the rehearsal the tenor seemed to have won the battle. +When at the performance he found the couch in the exact spot which +had been designated by the lady his indignation was all the greater +on this account. With as much regard for the action of the drama as +was consistent with so violent a gesture he gave the couch a violent +shove with his projected toe, with the intention of pushing it into his +chosen locality. He retired with a howl, nursing a wounded member. The +couch had been nailed to the floor! + +It is related that Marie Delna was discovered washing dishes at an inn +in a small town near Paris. Her benefactors took her to the capital +and placed her in the Conservatoire. She always retained a certain +peasant obstinacy, and it is said that during the course of her +instruction when she was corrected she frequently replied, “Je m’en +vais.” Against this phrase argument was unavailing and Mme. Delna, as +a result, acquired a habit of having her own way. Her Orphée was (and +still is, I should think) one of the notable achievements of our epoch. +It must have equalled Pauline Viardot’s performance dramatically, +and transcended it vocally. After singing the part several hundred +times she naturally acquired certain habits and mannerisms, tricks +both of action and of voice. Still, it is said that when she came to +the Metropolitan Opera House she offered, at a rehearsal, to defer +to Mr. Toscanini’s ideas. He, the rumour goes, gave his approval to +her interpretation on this occasion. Not so at the performance. Those +who have heard it can never forget the majesty and beauty of this +characterization, as noble a piece of stage work as we have seen or +heard in our day. At her début in the part in New York Mme. Delna was +superb, vocally and dramatically. In the celebrated air, _Che faro +senza Euridice_, the singer followed the tradition, doubly established +by the example of Mme. Viardot in the great revival of the mid-century, +of singing the different stanzas of the air in different _tempi_. In +her slowest _adagio_ the conductor became impatient. He beat his stick +briskly across his desk and whipped up the orchestra. There was soon +a hiatus of two bars between singer and musicians. It was a terrible +moment, but the singer won the victory. She _turned her back on the +conductor_ and continued to sing in her own time. The organ tones +rolled out and presently the audience became aware of a junction +between the two great forces. Mr. Toscanini was vanquished, but he +never forgave her. + +During the opera season of 1915-16, opera-goers were treated to a +diverting exhibition. Mme. Geraldine Farrar, just returned from a fling +at three five-reel cinema dramas, elected to instil a bit of moving +picture realism into _Carmen_. Fresh with the memory of her prolonged +and brutal scuffle in the factory scene as it was depicted on the +screen, Mme. Farrar attempted something like it in the opera, the first +act of which was enlivened with sundry blows and kicks. More serious +still were her alleged assaults on the tenor (Mr. Caruso) in the third +act which, it is said, resulted in his clutching her like a struggling +eel, to prevent her interference with his next note. There was even +a suggestion of disagreement in the curtain calls which ensued. All +these incidents of an enlivening evening were duly and impressively +chronicled in the daily press. + +There is, of course, Vladimir de Pachmann. Everybody who has attended +his recitals has come under the spell of his beautiful tone and has +been annoyed by his bad manners. For, curiously enough, the two +qualities have become inseparable with him, especially in recent +years. Once in Chicago I saw the strange little pianist sit down +in front of his instrument, rise again, gesticulate, and leave the +stage. Returning with a stage-hand he pointed to his stool; it was +not satisfactory. A chair was brought in, tried, and found wanting; +more gesticulation--this time wilder. At length, after considerable +discussion between Mr. de Pachmann and the stage-hand, all in view +of the audience, it was decided that nothing would do but that some +one must fetch the artist’s own piano bench from his hotel, which, +fortunately, adjoined the concert hall. This was accomplished in the +course of time. In the interval the pianist did not leave the platform. +He sat at the back on the chair which had been offered him as a +substitute for the offending stool and entertained his audience with a +spectacular series of grimaces. + +On another occasion this singular genius arrested his fingers in the +course of a performance of one of Chopin’s études. His ears were +enraptured, it would seem, by his own rendition of a certain run; over +and over again he played it, now faster, now more slowly; at times +almost slowly enough to give the student in the front row a glimpse +of the magic fingering. With a sudden change of manner he announced, +“This is the way Godowsky would play this scale”: great velocity but a +dry tone. Then, “And now Pachmann again!” The magic fingers stroked the +keys. + +Even as an auditor de Pachmann sometimes exploits his eccentricities. +Josef Hofmann once told me the following story: De Pachmann was sitting +in the third row at a concert Rubinstein gave in his prime. De Pachmann +burst into hilarious laughter, rocking to and fro. Rubinstein was +playing beautifully and de Pachmann’s neighbour, annoyed, demanded why +he was laughing. De Pachmann could scarcely speak as he pointed to the +pianist on the stage and replied, “He used the fourth finger instead of +the third in that run. Isn’t it funny?” + +I cannot take Vladimir de Pachmann to task for these amusing bad +manners! But they annoy the _bourgeois_. We should most of us be glad +to have Oscar Wilde brilliant at our dinner parties, even though he +ate peas with his knife; and Napoleon’s generalship would have been +as effective if he had been an omnivorous reader of the works of +Laura Jean Libbey. But one must not dwell too long on de Pachmann. +One might be tempted to devote an entire essay to the relation of his +eccentricities. + +Another pianist, also a composer, claims attention: Alberto Savinio. +You may find a photolithograph of Savinio’s autograph manuscript of +_Bellovées Fatales, No. 12_, in that curious periodical entitled “291,” +the number for April, 1915. There is a programme, which reads as +follows: + + +LA PASSION DES ROTULES + + La Femme: Ah! Il m’a touché de sa jambe de caoutchouc! Ma-ma! Ma-ma! + + L’Homme: Tutto s’ha di rosa, Maria, per te.... + + La Femme: Ma-ma! Ma-ma! + +There are indications as to how the composer wishes his music to be +played, sometimes _glissando_ and sometimes “_avec des poings_.” The +rapid and tortuous passages between the black and white keys would +test the contortionistic qualities of any one’s fingers. Savinio, +it is said, at his appearances in Paris, actually played until his +fingers _bled_. When he had concluded, indeed, the ends of his fingers +were crushed and bruised and the keyboard was red with blood. Albert +Gleizes, quoted by Walter Conrad Arensberg, is my authority for this +bizarre history of music and bad manners. I have not seen (or heard) +Savinio perform. But when I told this tale to Leo Ornstein he assured +me that he frequently had had a similar experience. + +Romain Rolland in “Jean-Christophe” relates an incident which is +especially interesting because it has a foundation in fact. Something +of the sort happened to Hugo Wolf when an orchestra performed his +_Penthesilea_ overture for the first time. It is a curious example of +bad manners in which both the performers and the audience join. + +“At last it came to Christophe’s symphony.” (I am quoting from Gilbert +Cannan’s translation.) “He saw from the way the orchestra and the +people in the hall were looking at his box that they were aware of his +presence. He hid himself. He waited with the catch at his heart which +every musician feels at the moment when the conductor’s wand is raised +and the waters of the music gather in silence before bursting their +dam. He had never yet heard his work played. How would the creatures of +his dreams live? How would their voices sound? He felt their roaring +within him; and he leaned over the abyss of sounds waiting fearfully +for what should come forth. + +“What did come forth was a nameless thing, a shapeless hotchpotch. +Instead of the bold columns which were to support the front of the +building the chords came crumbling down like a building in ruins; there +was nothing to be seen but the dust of mortar. For a moment Christophe +was not quite sure whether they were really playing his work. He cast +back for the train, the rhythm of his thoughts; he could not recognize +it; it went on babbling and hiccoughing like a drunken man clinging +close to the wall, and he was overcome with shame, as though he himself +had been seen in that condition. It was to no avail to think that he +had not written such stuff; when an idiotic interpreter destroys a +man’s thoughts he has always a moment of doubt when he asks himself +in consternation if he is himself responsible for it. The audience +never asks such a question; the audience believes in the interpreter, +in the singers, in the orchestra whom they are accustomed to hear, as +they believe in their newspaper; they cannot make a mistake; if they +say absurd things, it is the absurdity of the author. This audience +was the less inclined to doubt because it liked to believe. Christophe +tried to persuade himself that the _Kapellmeister_ was aware of the +hash and would stop the orchestra and begin again. The instruments were +not playing together. The horn had missed his beat and had come in a +bar too late; he went on for a few minutes and then stopped quietly +to clean his instrument. Certain passages for the oboe had absolutely +disappeared. It was impossible for the most skilled ear to pick up +the thread of the musical idea, or even to imagine there was one. +Fantastic instrumentations, humoristic sallies became grotesque through +the coarseness of the execution. It was lamentably stupid, the work of +an idiot, of a joker who knew nothing of music. Christophe tore his +hair. He tried to interrupt, but the friend who was with him held him +back, assuring him that the _Herr Kapellmeister_ must surely see the +faults of the execution and would put everything right--that Christophe +must not show himself and that if he made any remark it would have a +very bad effect. He made Christophe sit at the very back of the box. +Christophe obeyed, but he beat his head with his fists; and every fresh +monstrosity drew from him a groan of indignation and misery. + +“‘The wretches! The wretches!...’ + +“He groaned and squeezed his hands tight to keep from crying out. + +“Now mingled with the wrong notes there came up to him the muttering +of the audience, who were beginning to be restless. At first it was +only a tremor; but soon Christophe was left without a doubt; they were +laughing. The musicians of the orchestra had given the signal; some +of them did not conceal their hilarity. The audience, certain then +that the music was laughable, rocked with laughter. This merriment +became general; it increased at the return of a very rhythmical motif +with the double-basses accentuated in a burlesque fashion. Only the +_Kapellmeister_ went on through the uproar imperturbably beating time. + +“At last they reached the end (the best things come to an end). It was +the turn of the audience. They exploded with delight, an explosion +which lasted for several minutes. Some hissed; others applauded +ironically; the wittiest of all shouted ‘Encore!’ A bass voice coming +from a stage box began to imitate the grotesque motif. Other jokers +followed suit and imitated it also. Some one shouted ‘Author!’ It was +long since these witty folk had been so highly entertained. + +“When the tumult was calmed down a little the _Kapellmeister_, standing +quite impassive with his face turned towards the audience, though he +was pretending not to see it (the audience was still supposed to be +non-existent), made a sign to the audience that he was about to speak. +There was a cry of ‘Ssh,’ and silence. He waited a moment longer; then +(his voice was curt, cold, and cutting): + +“‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I should certainly not have let _that_ be +played through to the end if I had not wished to make an example of +the gentleman who has dared to write offensively of the great Brahms.’ + +“That was all; jumping down from his stand he went out amid cheers from +the delighted audience. They tried to recall him; the applause went on +for a few minutes longer. But he did not return. The orchestra went +away. The audience decided to go too. The concert was over. + +“It had been a good day.” + +Von Bülow once stopped his orchestra at a public performance to +remonstrate with a lady with a fan in the front row of seats. “Madame,” +he said gravely, “I must beg you to cease fanning yourself in +three-four time while I am conducting in four-four time!” + +Here are a few personal recollections of bad mannered audiences. A +performance of _The Magic Flute_ in Chicago comes to mind. Fritzi +Scheff, the Papagena, and Giuseppe Campanari, the Papageno, had +concluded their duet in the last act amidst a storm of applause, in +face of which the conductor sped on to the entrance of the Queen of the +Night. Mme. Sembrich entered and sang a part of her recitative unheard. +One could see, however, that her jaws opened and closed with the +mechanism incidental to tone-production. After a few bars she retired +defeated and the bad mannered audience continued to shout and applaud +until that unspeakable bit of nonsense which runs “Pa-pa-pa,” etc., was +repeated. Mme. Sembrich appeared no more that day. + +Another stormy audience I encountered at a concert of the Colonne +Orchestra in Paris. Those who sit in the gallery at these concerts at +the Chatelet Theatre are notoriously opinionated. There the battles of +Richard Strauss and Debussy have been fought. The gallery crowd always +comes early because seats in the top of the house are unreserved. They +cost a franc or two; I forget exactly how much, but I have often sat +there. To pass the time until the concert begins, and also to show +their indifference to musical literature and the opinions of others, +the galleryites fashion a curious form of spill, with one end in a +point and the other feathered like an arrow, out of the pages of the +annotated programmes. These are then sent sailing, in most instances +with infinite dexterity and incredible velocity, over the heads of the +arriving audience. The objective point is the very centre of the back +cloth on the stage, a spot somewhat above the kettle-drum. A successful +shot always brings forth a round of applause. But this is (or was) an +episode incident to any Colonne concert. I am describing an occasion. + +The concert took place during the season of poor Colonne’s final +illness (now he lies buried in that curiously remote avenue of +Père-Lachaise where repose the ashes of Oscar Wilde). Gabriel Pierné, +his successor, had already assumed the bâton, and he conducted the +concert in question. Anton Van Rooy was the soloist and he had chosen +to sing two very familiar (and very popular in Paris) Wagner excerpts, +Wotan’s Farewell from _Die Walküre_, and the air which celebrates the +evening star from _Tannhäuser_. (In this connection I might state that +in this same winter--1908-9--_Das Rheingold_ was given _in concert +form_--it had not yet been performed at the Opéra--on two consecutive +Sundays at the Lamoureux Concerts in the Salle Gaveau to _standing room +only_.) The concert proceeded in orderly fashion until Mr. Van Rooy +appeared; then the uproar began. The gallery hooted, and screamed, +and yelled. All the terrible noises which only a Paris crowd can +invent were hurled from the dark recesses of that gallery. The din was +appalling, terrifying. Mr. Van Rooy nervously fingered a sheet of music +he held in his hands. Undoubtedly visions of the first performance of +_Tannhäuser_ at the Paris Opéra passed through his mind. He may also +have considered the possibility of escaping to the Gare du Nord, with +the chance of catching a train for Germany before the mob could tear +him into bits. Mr. Pierné, who knew his Paris, faced the crowd, while +the audience below peered up and shuddered, with something of the +fright of the aristocrats during the first days of the Revolution. Then +he held up his hand and, in time, the modest gesture provoked a modicum +of silence. In that silence some one shrieked out the explanation: +“_Tannhäuser_ avant _Walküre_.” That was all. The gallery was not +satisfied with the order of the programme. The readjustment was quickly +made, the parts distributed to the orchestra, and Mr. Van Rooy sang +Wolfram’s air before Wotan’s. It may be said that never could he have +hoped for a more complete ovation, a more flattering reception than +that which the Parisian audience accorded him when he had finished. The +applause was veritably deafening. + +I have related elsewhere at some length my experiences at the first +Paris performance of Igor Strawinsky’s ballet, _The Sacrifice to the +Spring_, an appeal to primitive emotion through a nerve-shattering use +of rhythm, staged in ultra-modern style by Waslav Nijinsky. Chords +and legs seemed disjointed. Flying arms synchronized marvellously +with screaming clarinets. But this first audience would not permit the +composer to be heard. Cat-calls and hisses succeeded the playing of +the first few bars, and then ensued a battery of screams, countered +by a foil of applause. We warred over art (some of us thought it was +and some thought it wasn’t). The opposition was bettered at times; +at any rate it was a more thrilling battle than Strauss conceived +between the Hero and his enemies in _Heldenleben_ and the celebrated +scenes from _Die Meistersinger_ and _The Rape of the Lock_ could not +stand the comparison. Some forty of the protestants were forced out +of the theatre but that did not quell the disturbance. The lights in +the auditorium were fully turned on but the noise continued and I +remember Mlle. Piltz executing her strange dance of religious hysteria +on a stage dimmed by the blazing light in the auditorium, seemingly to +the accompaniment of the disjointed ravings of a mob of angry men and +women. Little by little, at subsequent performances of the work the +audiences became more mannerly, and when it was given in concert in +Paris the following year it was received with applause. + +Some of my readers may remember the demonstration directed (supposedly) +against American singers when the Metropolitan Opera Company invaded +Paris some years ago for a spring season. The opening opera was _Aïda_, +and all went well until the first scene of the second act, in which +the reclining Amneris chants her thoughts while her slaves dance. Here +the audience began to give signs of disapproval, which presently broke +out into open hissing, and finally into a real hullabaloo. Mme. Homer, +nothing daunted, continued to sing. She afterwards told me that she +had never sung with such force and intensity. And in a few moments she +broke the spell, and calmed the riot. + +Arthur Nikisch once noted that players of the bassoon were more +sensitive than the other members of his orchestra; he found them +subject to quick fits of temper, and intolerant of criticism. He +attributed this to the delicate mechanism of the instrument which +required the nicest apportionment of breath. Clarinet players, he +discovered, were less sensitive. One could joke with them in reason; +while horn players were as tractable as Newfoundland dogs!--A case of a +sensitive pianist comes to mind, brought to bay by as rude an audience +as I can recall. Mr. Paderewski was playing Beethoven’s C sharp minor +sonata at one of these morning musicales arranged at the smart hotels +so that the very rich may see more intimately the well-known artists of +the concert and opera stage, when some women started to go out. In his +following number, Couperin’s _La Bandoline_, the interruption became +intolerable and he stopped playing. “Those who do not wish to hear me +will kindly leave the room immediately,” he said, “and those who wish +to remain will kindly take their seats.” The outflow continued, while +those who remained seated began to hiss. “I am astonished to find +people in New York leaving while an artist is playing,” the pianist +added. Then some one started to applaud; the applause deepened, and +finally Mr. Paderewski consented to play again and took his place on +the bench before his instrument. + +The incident was the result of the pianist’s well-known aversion to +appearing in conjunction with other artists. He had finally agreed to +do so on this occasion provided he would be allowed to play after the +others had concluded their performances. There had been many recalls +for the singer and violinist who preceded him and it was well after +one o’clock (the concert had begun at eleven) before he walked on +the platform. Now one o’clock is a very late hour at a fashionable +morning musicale. Some of those present were doubtless hungry; others, +perhaps, had trains to catch; while there must have been a goodly +number who had heard all the music they wanted to hear that morning. +There was a very pretty ending to the incident. Once he had begun, Mr. +Paderewski played for an hour and twenty minutes, and the faithful +ones, who had remained seated, applauded so much when he finally rose +from the bench, even after he had added several numbers to the printed +programme, that the echoes of the clapping hands accompanied him to his +motor. + +I have reserved for the last a description of a concert given at the +Dal Verme Theatre in Milan by the Italian Futurists. The account is +culled from the “Corriere della Sera” of that city, and the translation +is that which appeared in “International Music and Drama”: + +“At the Dal Verme a Futurist concert of ‘intonarumori’ was to be held +last night, but instead of this there was an uproarious din intoned +both by the public and the Futurists which ended in a free-for-all +fight. + +“In a speech which was listened to with sufficient attention, +Marinetti, the poet, announced that this was to be the first public +trial of a new device invented by Luigi Russelo, a Futurist painter. +This instrument is called the ‘noise-maker’ and its purpose is to +render a new kind of music. Modern life vibrates with all sorts of +noises; music therefore must render this sensation. This, in brief, is +the idea. In order to develop it Russelo had invented several types of +noise-makers, each of which renders a different sound. + +“After Marinetti’s speech the curtain went up and the new orchestra +appeared in all its glory amidst the bellowings of the public. The +famous ‘noise-intonators’ proved to be made out of a sort of bass-drum +with an immense trumpet attached to it, the latter looking very much +like a gramaphone horn. Behind the instrument sat the players, whose +only function was to turn the crank rhythmically in order to create the +harmonic noise. They looked, while performing this agreeable task, like +a squad of knife-grinders. But it was impossible to hear the music. The +public was unconditionally intolerant. We only caught here and there a +faint buzz and growl. Then everything was drowned in the billowing seas +of howls, jeers, hisses, and cat-calls. What they were hissing at, it +being impossible to hear the music, was not quite clear. They hissed +just for the fun of it. It was a case of art for art’s sake. Painter +Russelo, however, continued undisturbed to direct his mighty battery +of musical howitzers and his professors kept on grinding their pieces +with a beautiful serenity of mind, all the while the tumult increasing +to redoubtable proportions. The consequence was that those who went +to the Dal Verme for the purpose of listening to Futurist music had +to give up all hopes and resign themselves to hear the bedlam of the +public. + +“In vain did Marinetti attempt to speak, begging them to be quiet for +a while and assuring them that they would be allowed a whole carnival +of howls at the end of the concert--the public wanted to hiss and there +was no way to check it. But Russelo kept right on. He conducted with +imperturbable solemnity the three pieces we were supposed to hear: _The +Awakening of a Great City_, _A Dinner on a Kursaal Terrace_, and _A +Meet of Automobiles and Aeroplanes_. Nobody heard anything, but Russelo +rendered everything conscientiously. The only thing we were able to +find out about Futurist music is that the noise of the orchestra is by +no means too loud, or at least not louder than impromptu choruses. + +“But the worst was reserved for the middle of the third piece. The +exchange of hot words and very old-fashioned courtesies had now become +ultra-vivacious and was being punctuated with several projectiles and +an occasional blow. At this point, Marinetti, Boccioni, Carra, and +other Futurists jumped into the pit and began to distribute all sorts +of blows to the infuriated spectators. The new Futurist style enables +us to synthesize the scene. Blows. Carbineers. Inspectors. Cushions and +chairs flying about. Howls. Public standing on chairs. Concert goes +on. More howls, shrieks, curses, and thunderous insults. Futurists are +led back to stage by gendarmes. Public slowly passes out. Marinetti +and followers pass out before public. Again howls, invectives, +guffaws, and fist blows. Piazza Cardusio. More blows. Galleria. Ditto. +Futurists enter Savini’s café while pugilistic matches go merrily on. +Mob attempts to storm stronghold. Iron gates close. Futurists are shut +in, in good condition, save few torn hats. Mob slowly calms down and +disperses. The end.” + + +_New York, May, 1916._ + + + + + Music for the Movies + + “_O Tempora! O Movies!_” + + W. B. Chase. + + + + +Music for the Movies + + +Despite the fact that it would seem that the moving picture drama had +opened up new worlds to the modern musician, no important composer, +so far as I am aware, has as yet turned his attention to the writing +of music for the films. If the cinema drama is in its infancy, as +some would have us believe, then we may be sure that the time is not +far distant when moving picture scores will take their places on the +musicians’ book-shelves alongside those of operas, symphonies, masses, +and string quartets. In the meantime, entirely ignorant of the truth +(or oblivious to it, or merely helpless, as the case may be) that +writing music for moving pictures is a new art, which demands a new +point of view, the directors of the picture theatres are struggling +with the situation as best they may. Under the circumstances it is +remarkable, on the whole, how swiftly and how well the demand for music +with the silent drama has been met. Certainly the music is usually on +a level with (or of a better quality than) the type of entertainment +offered. But the directors have not definitely tackled the problem; +they still continue to try to force old wine into new bottles, +arranging and re-arranging melody and harmony which was contrived for +quite other occasions and purposes. Even when scores have been written +for pictures the result has not shown any imaginative advance over the +arranged score. It is strange, but it has occurred to no one that the +moving picture demands a _new_ kind of music. + +The composers, I should imagine, are only waiting to be asked to write +it. Certainly none of them has ever shown any hesitancy about composing +incidental music for the spoken drama. Mendelssohn wrote strains for +_A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ which seemed pledged to immortality until +Granville Barker ignored them; the Wedding March is still in favour +in Kankakee and Keokuk. Beethoven illustrated Goethe’s _Egmont_; Sir +Arthur Sullivan penned a score for _The Tempest_; Schubert was inspired +to put down some of his most ravishing notes for a stupid play called +_Rosamunde_; Grieg’s _Peer Gynt_ music is more often performed than +the play. More recent instances of incidental music for dramas are +Saint-Saëns’s score for Brieux’s _La Foi_, Mascagni’s for _The Eternal +City_, and Richard Strauss’s for _Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme_. Is it +necessary to continue the list? I have only, after all, put down a few +of the obvious examples (passing by the thousands upon thousands of +scores devised by lesser composers for lesser plays) that would spring +at once to any musician’s mind. Of course it has usually been the +poetic drama (do we ever hear Shakespeare or Rostand without it?) which +has seemed to call for incidental music but it has accompanied (with +more or less disastrous consequences, to be sure) the unfolding of many +a “drawing-room” play; especially during the eighties. + +When the first moving picture was exposed on the screen it seems to +have occurred to its projector at once that some kind of music must +accompany its unreeling. The silence evidently appalled him. A moving +picture is not unlike a ballet in that it depends entirely upon action +(it differs from a ballet in that the action is not necessarily +rhythmic)--and whoever heard of a ballet performed without music? Sound +certainly has its value in creating an atmosphere and in emphasizing +the “thrill” of the moving picture, especially when the sound is +selected and co-ordinated. It may also divert the attention. On the +whole, more photographed plays follow the general lines of _Lady +Windemere’s Fan_ or _Peg o’ My Heart_ than of poetic dramas such as +_Cymbeline_ or _La Samaritaine_. The problem here, however, is not +the same as in the spoken drama. For in motion pictures a poetic +play sheds its poetry and becomes, like its neighbour, a skeleton of +action. There is no conceivable distinction in the “movies” (beyond +one created by preference, or taste, or the quality of the performance +and the photography) between Dante’s _Inferno_ and a picture in which +the beloved Charles Chaplin looms large. The directors of the moving +picture companies have tried to meet this problem; that they have not +wholly succeeded so far is not entirely their fault. + +It is no easy matter, for example, in a theatre in which the films are +changed daily (this is the general rule even in the larger houses), for +the musicians (or musician) to arrange a satisfactory accompaniment +for 5,000 feet of action which includes everything from an earthquake +in Cuba to a dinner in Park Lane, and it is scarcely possible, even if +the distributors be so inclined (as they frequently are nowadays) to +furnish a music score which will answer the purposes of the different +sized bands, ranging from a full orchestra to an upright piano, _solo_. +As for the pictures without pre-arranged scores, the orchestra leaders +and pianists must do the best they can with them. + +In some houses there is an attitude of total disrespect paid towards +the picture by the _chef d’orchestre_. He arranges his musical +programme as if he were giving a concert, not at all with a view to +effectively accompanying the picture. In a theatre on Second Avenue +in New York, for example, I have heard an orchestra play the whole +of Beethoven’s First Symphony as an accompaniment to Irene Fenwick’s +performance of _The Woman Next Door_. As the symphony came to an +end before the picture it was supplemented by a Waldteufel waltz, +_Les Patineurs_. The result, in this instance, was not altogether +incongruous or even particularly displeasing, and it occurred to me +that if one had to listen to music while the third act of _Hedda +Gabler_ were being enacted one would prefer to hear something like +Boccherini’s celebrated minuet or a light Mozart dance rather than +anything ostensibly contrived to fit the situation. In the latter +instance the result would be sure to be unbearable bathos. + +On the other hand there are certain players for pictures who remind one +by their methods of the anxiety of Richard Strauss to describe every +peacock and bean mentioned in any of his opera-books. If a garden is +exposed on the screen one hears _The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring_; +a love scene is the signal for _Un Peu d’Amour_; a cross or any +religious episode suggests _The Rosary_ to these ingenuous musicians; +Japan brings a touch of _Madame Butterfly_; a proposal of marriage, +_O Promise Me_; and a farewell, Tosti’s _Good-bye!_ This expedient of +appealing through the intellect to the emotions, it may be admitted, +has the stamp of approval of no less a composer than Richard Wagner. + +Lacking the authority of real moving picture music (which a new +composer must rise to invent) the safest way (not necessarily the +_best_ way) is the middle course--one method for this, another for +that. One of the difficulties is to arrange a music score for a theatre +with a large orchestra, where the leader must plan his score--or have +it planned for him--for an entire picture before his orchestra can +play a note. Music cues must be definite: twenty bars of _Alexander’s +Ragtime Band_, seventeen of _The Ride of the Valkyries_, ten of _Vissi +d’Arte_, etc. An ingenious young man has discovered a way by which +music and action may be exactly synchronized. I feel the impulse to +quote extensively from the somewhat vivid report of his achievement, +published in one of the motion picture weekly journals: “Here was a +man-sized job--how to measure the action of the picture to the musical +score, so that they would both come out equal at every part of the +picture, and would be so exact that any orchestra might take the score +and follow the movement of the play with absolute correctness. It was +a question primarily of mathematics, but even so it was some time +before a system of computation was devised before the undertaking was +gotten down to a certainty. As an illustration, on the opening night of +one of the most notable photoplay productions now before the public, +the orchestra, notwithstanding a three weeks’ rehearsal, found at the +conclusion of the picture that it was a page and a half behind the +play’s action in the musical setting.” Then we learn that Frank Stadler +of New York “provided the remedy for this condition of affairs.” It +is impossible to resist the temptation to quote further from this +extremely racy account. “He remembered that Beethoven had overcome +the difficulty of proper timing for his sonatas by a mechanical +arrangement known as the metronome, invented by a friend of his. This +is an arrangement with a little bell attached which may be set for the +movement of the music and used as an exact guide to the right measure, +the bell giving warning at the expiration of each period so that the +leader knows whether he is in time or not.” Mr. Stadler then began the +measurement of a film with a metronome, a stenographer, and a watch. +He found that the film ran ten feet to every eight seconds and he set +the metronome for eight second periods accordingly. “The stenographer +made a note of the action of the picture each time the bell rang, with +the result that when the entire picture had been run Mr. Stadler had a +complete record of the production. All that was necessary then was to +select from the classics and the popular melodies the music which would +give a suitable atmosphere and a harmonious accompaniment to the theme +of the play, so synchronizing the music with the eight second periods +that every bar of it fitted the spirit of the many score of scenes of +the production.” + +The single man orchestra, the player of the upright piano, need not +make so many preparatory gestures. He may with impunity, if he be of +an inventive turn of mind, or if his memory be good, improvise his +score as the picture unreels itself for the first time before what +may very well be his astonished vision; and, after that, he may vary +his accompaniment, as the shows of the day progress, improving it +here or there, or not, as the case may be, keeping generally as near +to his original performance as possible. Of course he puts a good +deal of reliance on rum-ti-tum shivery passages (known to orchestra +leaders as “_agits_”--an abbreviation of _agitato_; a page or two +of them is distributed to every member of a moving picture band) to +accompany moments of excitement. This music you will remember if you +have ever attended a performance of a Lincoln J. Carter melodrama in +which a train was wrecked, or a hero rescued from the teeth of a saw, +or a heroine pursued by bloodhounds. (Those were the good old days!) +Recently I heard a pianist in a moving picture house on Fourteenth +Street in New York eke out a half-hour with similar poundings on two +or three well used chords (well used even in the time of Hadyn). The +scenes represented the whole of a two-act opera, and the ambitious +pianist was trying to give his audience the effect of singers +(principals and chorus) and orchestra with his three chords. (Shades of +Arnold Schoenberg!) + +A certain periodical devoted to the interests of the moving picture +trade, conducts a department as first aid to the musical conductors +and pianists who figure at these shows. In a recent number the editor +of this department gives it as his solemn opinion that musicians who +read fiction are the best equipped for picture playing. Then, with an +almost tragic parenthesis, he continues, “Reading fiction is the last +diversion that the average musician will follow. He feels that all +the necessary romance is to be found in his music.” Facts are dead, +says this editor in substance, but fiction is living and should make +you weep. When you cry, all that remains for you to do is to think of +a tune which will synchronize with the cause of your tears; this will +serve you later when a similar scene occurs in a film drama. + +There is one tune which any capable moving picture pianist has found +will synchronize with any Keystone picture (for the benefit of the +uninitiated I may state that in the Keystone farces some one gets +kicked or knocked down or spat upon several times in almost every +scene). I do not know what the tune is, but wherever Keystone pictures +are shown, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Chicago, and +even New York, I have heard it. When a character falls into the water +(and at least ten of them invariably do) the pianist may vary the tune +by sitting on the piano or by upsetting a chair. In one theatre I have +known him to cause glass to be shattered behind the screen at a moment +when the picture exposed a similar scene. How Marinetti would like that! + +However, the day of this sort of thing is rapidly approaching its +close, I venture to say. Some of the firms are already issuing arranged +music scores for their productions (one may note in passing the score +which accompanied Geraldine Farrar’s screen performance of _Carmen_, +largely selected from the music of Bizet’s opera, and Victor Herbert’s +original score for _The Fall of a Nation_, a score which does not take +full advantage of the new technique of the cinema drama). It will +not be long before an enterprising director engages an enterprising +musician to compose music for a picture. For the same reason that +d’Annunzio, very early in the career of the moving picture, wrote a +scenario for a film, I should not be surprised to learn that Richard +Strauss was under contract to construct an accompaniment to a screened +drama. It will be very loud music and it will require an orchestra of +143 men to interpret it and probably the composer himself will conduct +the first performance, and, later, excerpts will be given by the Boston +Symphony Orchestra and the critics will say, in spite of Philip Hale’s +diverting programme notes, that this music should never be played +except in conjunction with the picture for which it was written. +Mascagni is another composer who should find an excellent field for his +talent in writing tone-poems for pictures, although he would contrive +nothing more daring than a well-arranged series of illustrative +melodies. + +But put Igor Strawinsky, or some other modern genius, to work on this +problem and see what happens! The musician of the future should revel +in the opportunity the moving picture gives him to create a new form. +This form differs from that of the incidental music for a play in that +the flow of tone may be continuous and because one never needs to +soften the accompaniment so that the voices may be heard; it differs +from the music for a ballet in that the scene shifts constantly, +and consequently the time signatures and the mood and the key must +be as constantly shifting. The swift flash from scene to scene, the +“cut-back,” the necessary rapidity of the action, all are adapted to +inspire the futurist composer to brilliant effort; a tinkle of this and +a smash of that, without “working-out” or development; illustration, +comment, piquant or serious, that’s what the new film music should +be. The ultimate moving picture score will be something more than +sentimental accompaniment. + + +_New York, November 10, 1915._ + + + + + Spain and Music + + “_Il faut méditerraniser la musique._” + + Nietzsche. + + + + +Spain and Music + + +It has seemed to me at times that Oscar Hammerstein was gifted with +almost prophetic vision. He it was who imagined the glory of Times +(erstwhile Longacre) Square. Theatre after theatre he fashioned in what +was then a barren district--and presently the crowds and the hotels +came. He foresaw that French opera, given in the French manner, would +be successful again in New York, and he upset the calculations of all +the wiseacres by making money even with _Pelléas et Mélisande_, that +esoteric collaboration of Belgian and French art, which in the latter +part of the season of 1907-8 attained a record of seven performances +at the Manhattan Opera House, all to audiences as vast and as devoted +as those which attend the sacred festivals of _Parsifal_ at Bayreuth. +And he had announced for presentation during the season of 1908-9 +(and again the following season) a Spanish opera called _Dolores_. +If he had carried out his intention (why it was abandoned I have +never learned; the scenery and costumes were ready) he would have had +another honour thrust upon him, that of having been beforehand in the +production of modern Spanish opera in New York, an honour which, in +the circumstances, must go to Mr. Gatti-Casazza. (Strictly speaking, +_Goyescas_ was not the first Spanish opera to be given in New York, +although it was the first to be produced at the Metropolitan Opera +House. _Il Guarany_, by Antonio Carlos Gomez, a Portuguese born in +Brazil, was performed by the “Milan Grand Opera Company” during a three +weeks’ season at the Star Theatre in the fall of 1884. An air from +this opera is still in the répertoire of many sopranos. To go still +farther back, two of Manuel Garcia’s operas, sung of course in Italian, +_l’Amante Astuto_ and _La Figlia dell’Aria_, were performed at the Park +Theatre in 1825 with Maria Garcia--later to become the celebrated Mme. +Malibran--in the principal rôles. More recently an itinerant Italian +opéra-bouffe company, which gravitated from the Park Theatre--not the +same edifice that harboured Garcia’s company!--to various playhouses +on the Bowery, included three zarzuelas in its répertoire. One of +these, the popular _La Gran Via_, was announced for performance, +but my records are dumb on the subject and I am not certain that +it was actually given. There are probably other instances.) Mr. +Hammerstein had previously produced two operas _about_ Spain when he +opened his first Manhattan Opera House on the site now occupied by +Macy’s Department Store with Moszkowski’s _Boabdil_, quickly followed +by Beethoven’s _Fidelio_. The malagueña from _Boabdil_ is still a +favourite _morceau_ with restaurant orchestras, and I believe I have +heard the entire ballet suite performed by the Chicago Orchestra under +the direction of Theodore Thomas. New York’s real occupation by the +Spaniards, however, occurred after the close of Mr. Hammerstein’s +brilliant seasons, although the earlier vogue of Carmencita, whose +celebrated portrait by Sargent in the Luxembourg Gallery in Paris will +long preserve her fame, the interest in the highly-coloured paintings +by Sorolla and Zuloaga, many of which are still on exhibition in +private and public galleries in New York, the success here achieved, in +varying degrees, by such singing artists as Emilio de Gogorza, Andrea +de Segurola, and Lucrezia Bori, the performances of the piano works of +Albeniz, Turina, and Granados by such pianists as Ernest Schelling, +George Copeland, and Leo Ornstein, and the amazing Spanish dances of +Anna Pavlowa (who in attempting them was but following in the footsteps +of her great predecessors of the nineteenth century, Fanny Elssler and +Taglioni), all fanned the flames. + +The winter of 1915-16 beheld the Spanish blaze. Enrique Granados, +one of the most distinguished of contemporary Spanish pianists and +composers, a man who took a keen interest in the survival, and +artistic use, of national forms, came to this country to assist at the +production of his opera _Goyescas_, sung in Spanish at the Metropolitan +Opera House for the first time anywhere, and was also heard several +times here in his interpretative capacity as a pianist; Pablo Casals, +the Spanish ’cellist, gave frequent exhibitions of his finished art, +as did Miguel Llobet, the guitar virtuoso; La Argentina (Señora Paz +of South America) exposed her ideas, somewhat classicized, of Spanish +dances; a Spanish soprano, Maria Barrientos, made her North American +début and justified, in some measure, the extravagant reports which +had been spread broadcast about her singing; and finally the decree +of Paris (still valid in spite of Paul Poiret’s reported absence +in the trenches) led all our womenfolk into the wearing of Spanish +garments, the hip-hoops of the Velasquez period, the lace flounces +of Goya’s Duchess of Alba, and the mantillas, the combs, and the +_accroche-coeurs_ of Spain, Spain, Spain.... In addition one must +mention Mme. Farrar’s brilliant success, deserved in some degree, +as Carmen, both in Bizet’s opera and in a moving picture drama; +Miss Theda Bara’s film appearance in the same part, made with more +atmospheric suggestion than Mme. Farrar’s, even if less effective as +an interpretation of the moods of the Spanish cigarette girl; Mr. +Charles Chaplin’s eccentric burlesque of the same play; the continued +presence in New York of Andrea de Segurola as an opera and concert +singer; Maria Gay, who gave some performances in _Carmen_ and other +operas; and Lucrezia Bori, although she was unable to sing during the +entire season owing to the unfortunate result of an operation on her +vocal cords; in Chicago, Miss Supervia appeared at the opera and Mme. +Koutznezoff, the Russian, danced Spanish dances; and at the New York +Winter Garden Isabel Rodriguez appeared in Spanish dances which quite +transcended the surroundings and made that stage as atmospheric, for +the few brief moments in which it was occupied by her really entrancing +beauty, as a _maison de danse_ in Seville. The tango, too, in somewhat +modified form, continued to interest “ballroom dancers,” danced to +music provided in many instances by Señor Valverde, an indefatigable +producer of popular tunes, some of which have a certain value as music +owing to their close allegiance to the folk-dances and songs of Spain. +In the art-world there was a noticeable revival of interest in Goya and +El Greco. + +But if Mr. Gatti-Casazza, with the best intentions in the world, +should desire to take advantage of any of this _réclame_ by producing +a series of Spanish operas at the Metropolitan Opera House--say four +or five more--he would find himself in difficulty. Where are they? +Several of the operas of Isaac Albeniz have been performed in London, +and in Brussels at the Théâtre de la Monnaie, but would they be liked +here? There is Felipe Pedrell’s monumental work, the trilogy, _Los +Pireneos_, called by Edouard Lopez-Chavarri “the most important work +for the theatre written in Spain”; and there is the aforementioned +_Dolores_. For the rest, one would have to search about among the +zarzuelas; and would the Metropolitan Opera House be a suitable place +for the production of this form of opera? It is doubtful, indeed, if +the zarzuela could take root in any theatre in New York. + +The truth is that in Spain Italian and German operas are much more +popular than Spanish, the zarzuela always excepted; and at Señor +Arbós’s series of concerts at the Royal Opera in Madrid one hears +more Bach and Beethoven than Albeniz and Pedrell. There is a growing +interest in music in Spain and there are indications that some day +her composers may again take an important place with the musicians +of other nationalities, a place they proudly held in the sixteenth +and seventeenth centuries. However, no longer ago than 1894, we +find Louis Lombard writing in his “Observations of a Musician” that +harmony was not taught at the Conservatory of Malaga, and that at +the closing exercises of the Conservatory of Barcelona he had heard +a four-hand arrangement of the _Tannhäuser_ march performed on ten +pianos by forty hands! Havelock Ellis (“The Soul of Spain,” 1909) +affirms that a concert in Spain sets the audience to chattering. They +have a savage love of noise, the Spanish, he says, which incites them +to conversation. Albert Lavignac, in “Music and Musicians” (William +Marchant’s translation), says, “We have left in the shade the Spanish +school, which to say truth does not exist.” But if one reads what +Lavignac has to say about Moussorgsky, one is likely to give little +credence to such extravagant generalities as the one just quoted. +The Moussorgsky paragraph is a gem, and I am only too glad to insert +it here for the sake of those who have not seen it: “A charming and +fruitful melodist, who makes up for a lack of skill in harmonization +by a daring, which is sometimes of doubtful taste; has produced songs, +piano music in small amount, and an opera, _Boris Godunow_.” In the +report of the proceedings of the thirty-fourth session of the London +Musical Association (1907-8) Dr. Thomas Lea Southgate is quoted as +complaining to Sir George Grove because under “Schools of Composition” +in the old edition of Grove’s Dictionary the Spanish School was +dismissed in twenty lines. Sir George, he says, replied, “Well, I gave +it to Rockstro because nobody knows anything about Spanish music.”--The +bibliography of modern Spanish music is indeed indescribably meagre, +although a good deal has been written in and out of Spain about the +early religious composers of the Iberian peninsula. + +These matters will be discussed in due course. In the meantime it +has afforded me some amusement to put together a list (which may be +of interest to both the casual reader and the student of music) of +compositions suggested by Spain to composers of other nationalities. +(This list is by no means complete. I have not attempted to include +in it works which are not more or less familiar to the public of the +present day; without boundaries it could easily be extended into a +small volume.) The répertoire of the concert room and the opera house +is streaked through and through with Spanish atmosphere and, on the +whole, I should say, the best Spanish music has not been written by +Spaniards, although most of it, like the best music written in Spain, +is based primarily on the rhythm of folk-tunes, dances and songs. Of +orchestral pieces I think I must put at the head of the list Chabrier’s +rhapsody, _España_, as colourful and rhythmic a combination of tone as +the auditor of a symphony concert is often bidden to hear. It depends +for its melody and rhythm on two Spanish dances, the jota, fast and +fiery, and the malagueña, slow and sensuous. These are true Spanish +tunes; Chabrier, according to report, invented only the rude theme +given to the trombones. The piece was originally written for piano, and +after Chabrier’s death was transformed (with other music by the same +composer) into a ballet, _España_, performed at the Paris Opera, 1911. +Waldteufel based one of his most popular waltzes on the theme of this +rhapsody. Chabrier’s _Habanera_ for the pianoforte (1885) was his last +musical reminiscence of his journey to Spain. It is French composers +generally who have achieved better effects with Spanish atmosphere +than men of other nations, and next to Chabrier’s music I should put +Debussy’s _Iberia_, the second of his _Images_ (1910). It contains +three movements designated respectively as “In the streets and roads,” +“The perfumes of the night,” and “The morning of a fête-day.” It is +indeed rather the smell and the look of Spain than the rhythm that this +music gives us, entirely impressionistic that it is, but rhythm is not +lacking, and such characteristic instruments as castanets, tambourines, +and xylophones are required by the score. “Perfumes of the night” comes +as near to suggesting odours to the nostrils as any music can--and not +all of them are pleasant odours. There is Rimsky-Korsakow’s _Capriccio +Espagnole_, with its _alborado_ or lusty morning serenade, its long +series of cadenzas (as cleverly written as those of _Scheherazade_ to +display the virtuosity of individual players in the orchestra; it is +noteworthy that this work is dedicated to the sixty-seven musicians +of the band at the Imperial Opera House of Petrograd and all of their +names are mentioned on the score) to suggest the vacillating music of +a gipsy encampment, and finally the wild fandango of the Asturias with +which the work comes to a brilliant conclusion. Engelbert Humperdinck +taught the theory of music in the Conservatory of Barcelona for two +years (1885-6), and one of the results was his _Maurische Rhapsodie_ in +three parts (1898-9), still occasionally performed by our orchestras. +Lalo wrote his _Symphonie Espagnole_ for violin and orchestra for the +great Spanish virtuoso, Pablo de Sarasate, but all our violinists +delight to perform it (although usually shorn of a movement or two). +Glinka wrote a _Jota Aragonese_ and _A Night in Madrid_; he gave a +Spanish theme to Balakirew which the latter utilized in his _Overture +on a theme of a Spanish March_. Liszt wrote a _Spanish Rhapsody_ for +pianoforte (arranged as a concert piece for piano and orchestra by +Busoni) in which he used the jota of Aragon as a theme for variations. +Rubinstein’s _Toreador and Andalusian_ and Moszkowski’s _Spanish +Dances_ (for four hands) are known to all amateur pianists as Hugo +Wolf’s _Spanisches Liederbuch_ and Robert Schumann’s _Spanisches +Liederspiel_, set to F. Giebel’s translations of popular Spanish +ballads, are known to all singers. I have heard a song of Saint-Saëns, +_Guitares et Mandolines_, charmingly sung by Greta Torpadie, in which +the instruments of the title, under the subtle fingers of that masterly +accompanist, Coenraad V. Bos, were cleverly imitated. And Debussy’s +_Mandoline_ and Delibes’s _Les Filles de Cadiz_ (which in this country +belongs both to Emma Calvé and Olive Fremstad) spring instantly to +mind. Ravel’s _Rapsodie Espagnole_ is as Spanish as music could be. +The Boston Symphony men have played it during the season just past. +Ravel based the habanera section of his _Rapsodie_ on one of his piano +pieces. But Richard Strauss’s two tone-poems on Spanish subjects, _Don +Juan_ and _Don Quixote_, have not a note of Spanish colouring, so far +as I can remember, from beginning to end. Svendsen’s symphonic poem, +_Zorahayda_, based on a passage in Washington Irving’s “Alhambra,” +is Spanish in theme and may be added to this list together with +Waldteufel’s _Estudiantina_ waltzes. + + * * * * * + +Four modern operas stand out as Spanish in subject and atmosphere. I +would put at the top of the list Zandonai’s _Conchita_; the Italian +composer has caught on his musical palette and transferred to his tonal +canvas a deal of the lazy restless colour of the Iberian peninsula +in this little master-work. The feeling of the streets and patios is +admirably caught. My friend, Pitts Sanborn, said of it, after its +solitary performance at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York by +the Chicago Opera Company, “There is musical atmosphere of a rare +and penetrating kind; there is colour used with the discretion of a +master; there are intoxicating rhythms, and above the orchestra the +voices are heard in a truthful musical speech.... Ever since _Carmen_ +it has been so easy to write Spanish music and achieve supremely +the banal. Here there is as little of the Spanish of convention as +in Debussy’s _Iberia_, but there is Spain.” This opera, based on +Pierre Louys’s sadic novel, “La Femme et le Pantin,” owed some of its +extraordinary impression of vitality to the vivid performance given of +the title-rôle by Tarquinia Tarquini. Raoul Laparra, born in Bordeaux, +but who has travelled much in Spain, has written two Spanish operas, +_La Habanera_ and _La Jota_, both named after popular Spanish dances +and both produced at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. I have heard _La +Habanera_ there and found the composer’s use of the dance as a pivot of +a tragedy very convincing. Nor shall I forget the first act-close, in +which a young man, seated on a wall facing the window of a house where +a most bloody murder has been committed, sings a wild Spanish ditty, +accompanying himself on the guitar, crossing and recrossing his legs in +complete abandonment to the rhythm, while in the house rises the wild +treble cry of a frightened child. I have not heard _La Jota_, nor have +I seen the score. I do not find Emile Vuillermoz enthusiastic in his +review (“S. I. M.,” May 15, 1911): “Une danse transforme le premier +acte en un kaléidoscope frénétique et le combat dans l’église doit +donner, au second, dans l’intention de l’auteur ‘une sensation à pic, +un peu comme celle d’un puits où grouillerait la besogne monstreuse +de larves humaines.’ A vrai dire ces deux tableaux de cinématographe +papillotant, corsés de cris, de hurlements et d’un nombre incalculable +de coups de feu constituent pour le spectateur une épreuve physiquement +douloureuse, une hallucination confuse et inquiétante, un cauchemar +assourdissant qui le conduisent irrésistiblement à l’hébétude et à +la migraine. Dans tout cet enfer que devient la musique?” Perhaps +opera-goers in general are not looking for thrills of this order; the +fact remains that _La Jota_ has had a modest career when compared with +_La Habanera_, which has even been performed in Boston. _Carmen_ is +essentially a French opera; the leading emotions of the characters +are expressed in an idiom as French as that of Gounod; yet the dances +and entr’actes are Spanish in colour. The story of Carmen’s entrance +song is worth retelling in Mr. Philip Hale’s words (“Boston Symphony +Orchestra Programme Notes”; 1914-15, P. 287): “Mme. Galli-Marié +disliked her entrance air, which was in 6-8 time with a chorus. She +wished something more audacious, a song in which she could bring into +play the whole battery of her _perversités artistiques_, to borrow +Charles Pigot’s phrase: ‘caressing tones and smiles, voluptuous +inflections, killing glances, disturbing gestures.’ During the +rehearsals Bizet made a dozen versions. The singer was satisfied +only with the thirteenth, the now familiar Habanera, based on an old +Spanish tune that had been used by Sebastian Yradier. This brought +Bizet into trouble, for Yradier’s publisher, Heugel, demanded that the +indebtedness should be acknowledged in Bizet’s score. Yradier made no +complaint, but to avoid a lawsuit or a scandal, Bizet gave consent, and +on the first page of the Habanera in the French edition of _Carmen_ +this line is engraved: ‘Imitated from a Spanish song, the property of +the publishers of _Le Ménestrel_.’” + +There are other operas the scenes of which are laid in Spain. Some of +them make an attempt at Spanish colouring, more do not. Massenet wrote +no less than five operas on Spanish subjects, _Le Cid_, _Cherubin_, +_Don César de Bazan_, _La Navarraise_ and _Don Quichotte_ (Cervantes’s +novel has frequently lured the composers of lyric dramas with its +story; Clément et Larousse give a long list of _Don Quixote_ operas, +but they do not include one by Manuel Garcia, which is mentioned in +John Towers’s compilation, “Dictionary-Catalogue of Operas.” However, +not a single one of these lyric dramas has held its place on the +stage). The Spanish dances in _Le Cid_ are frequently performed, +although the opera is not. The most famous of the set is called simply +_Aragonaise_; it is not a jota. _Pleurez, mes yeux_, the principal air +of the piece, can scarcely be called Spanish. There is a delightful +suggestion of the jota in _La Navarraise_. In _Don Quichotte_ la belle +Dulcinée sings one of her airs to her own guitar strummings, and much +was made of the fact, before the original production at Monte Carlo, +of Mme. Lucy Arbell’s lessons on that instrument. Mary Garden, who +had learned to dance for _Salome_, took no guitar lessons for _Don +Quichotte_. But is not the guitar an anachronism in this opera? In a +pamphlet by Señor Cecilio de Roda, issued during the celebration of +the tercentenary of the publication of Cervantes’s romance, taking +as its subject the musical references in the work, I find, “The harp +was the aristocratic instrument most favoured by women and it would +appear to be regarded in _Don Quixote_ as the feminine instrument +par excellence.” Was the guitar as we know it in existence at that +epoch? I think the _vihuela_ was the guitar of the period.... Maurice +Ravel wrote a Spanish opera, _L’heure Espagnole_ (one act, performed +at the Paris Opéra-Comique, 1911). Octave Séré (“Musiciens français +d’Aujourd’hui”) says of it: “Les principaux traits de son caractère +et l’influence du sol natal s’y combinent étrangement. De l’alliance +de la mer et du Pays Basque (Ravel was born in the Basses-Pyrénées, +near the sea) est née une musique à la fois fluide et nerveusement +rythmée, mobile, chatoyante, amie du pittoresque et dont le trait +net et précis est plus incisif que profond.” Hugo Wolf’s opera _Der +Corregidor_ is founded on the novel, “Il Sombrero de tres Picos,” of +the Spanish writer, Pedro de Alarcon (1833-91). His unfinished opera +_Manuel Venegas_ also has a Spanish subject, suggested by Alarcon’s +“El Nino de la Bola.” Other Spanish operas are Beethoven’s _Fidelio_, +Balfe’s _The Rose of Castille_, Verdi’s _Ernani_ and _Il Trovatore_, +Rossini’s _Il Barbiere di Siviglia_, Mozart’s _Don Giovanni_ and _Le +Nozze di Figaro_, Weber’s _Preciosa_ (really a play with incidental +music), Dargomijsky’s _The Stone Guest_ (Pushkin’s version of the Don +Juan story. This opera, by the way, was one of the many retouched and +completed by Rimsky-Korsakow), Reznicek’s _Donna Diana_--and Wagner’s +_Parsifal_! The American composer John Knowles Paine’s opera _Azara_, +dealing with a Moorish subject, has, I think, never been performed. + + +II + +The early religious composers of Spain deserve a niche all to +themselves, be it ever so tiny, as in the present instance. There is, +to be sure, some doubt as to whether their inspiration was entirely +peninsular, or whether some of it was wafted from Flanders, and the +rest gleaned in Rome, for in their service to the church most of them +migrated to Italy and did their best work there. It is not the purpose +of the present chronicler to devote much space to these early men, +or to discuss in detail their music. There are no books in English +devoted to a study of Spanish music, and few in any language, but +what few exist take good care to relate at considerable length (some +of them with frequent musical quotation) the state of music in Spain +in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, the golden +period. To the reader who may wish to pursue this phase of our subject +I offer a small bibliography. There is first of all A. Soubies’s two +volumes, “Histoire de la Musique d’Espagne,” published in 1889. The +second volume takes us through the eighteenth century. The religious +and early secular composers are catalogued in these volumes, but there +is little attempt at detail, and he is a happy composer who is awarded +an entire page. Soubies does not find occasion to pause for more than a +paragraph on most of his subjects. Occasionally, however, he lightens +the plodding progress of the reader, as when he quotes Father Bermudo’s +“Declaracion de Instrumentos” (1548; the 1555 edition is in the Library +of Congress at Washington): “There are three kinds of instruments in +music. The first are called natural; these are men, of whom the song +is called _musical harmony_. Others are artificial and are played +by the touch--such as the harp, the _vihuela_ (the ancient guitar, +which resembles the lute), and others like them; the music of these +is called _artificial_ or rhythmic. The third species is pneumatique +and includes instruments such as the flute, the douçaine (a species of +oboe), and the organ.” There may be some to dispute this ingenious and +highly original classification. The best known, and perhaps the most +useful (because it is easily accessible) history of Spanish music is +that written by Mariano Soriano Fuertes, in four volumes: “Historia +de la Música Española desde la venida de los Fenicios hasta el año de +1850”; published in Barcelona and Madrid in 1855. There is further the +“Diccionario Tecnico, Historico, y Biografico de la Música,” by Jose +Parada y Barreto (Madrid, 1867). This, of course, is a general work on +music, but Spain gets her full due. For example, a page and a half is +devoted to Beethoven, and nine pages to Eslava. It is to this latter +composer to whom we must turn for the most complete and important +work on Spanish church music: “Lira Sacro-Hispana” (Madrid, 1869), +in ten volumes, with voluminous extracts from the composers’ works. +This collection of Spanish church music from the sixteenth century +through the eighteenth, with biographical notices of the composers is +out of print and rare (there is a copy in the Congressional Library +at Washington). As a complement to it I may mention Felipe Pedrell’s +“Hispaniae Schola Música Sacra,” begun in 1894, which has already +reached the proportions of Eslava’s work. Pedrell, who was the master +of Enrique Granados, has also issued a fine edition of the music of +Victoria. + +The Spanish composers had their full share in the process of +crystallizing music into forms of permanent beauty during the +sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Rockstro asserts that during the +early part of the sixteenth century nearly all the best composers for +the great Roman choirs were Spaniards. But their greatest achievement +was the foundation of the school of which Palestrina was the crown. On +the music of their own country their influence is less perceptible. I +think the name of Cristofero Morales (1512-53) is the first important +name in the history of Spanish music. He preceded Palestrina in Rome +and some of his masses and motets are still sung in the Papal chapel +there (and in other Roman Catholic edifices and by choral societies). +Francesco Guerrero (1528-99; these dates are approximate) was a pupil +of Morales. He wrote settings of the Passion choruses according to +St. Matthew and St. John and numerous masses and motets. Tomas Luis +de Victoria is, of course, the greatest figure in Spanish music, and +next to Palestrina (with whom he worked contemporaneously) the greatest +figure in sixteenth century music. Soubies writes: “One might say that +on his musical palette he has entirely at his disposition, in some +sort, the glowing colour of Zurbaran, the realistic and transparent +tones of Velasquez, the ideal shades of Juan de Juarez and Murillo. His +mysticism is that of Santa Theresa and San Juan de la Cruz.” The music +of Victoria is still very much alive and may be heard even in New York, +occasionally, through the medium of the Musical Art Society. Whether +it is performed in churches in America or not I do not know; the Roman +choirs still sing it.... + +The list might be extended indefinitely ... but the great names I +have given. There are Cabezon, whom Pedrell calls the “Spanish Bach,” +Navarro, Caseda, Comes, Ribera, Castillo, Lobo, Duron, Romero, Juarez. +On the whole I think these composers had more influence on Rome--the +Spanish nature is more reverent than the Italian--than on Spain. The +modern Spanish composers have learned more from the folk-song and dance +than they have from the church composers. However, there are voices +which dissent from this opinion. G. Tebaldini (“Rivista Musicale,” Vol. +IV, Pp. 267 and 494) says that Pedrell in his studies learned much +which he turned to account in the choral writing of his operas. And +Felipe Pedrell himself asserts that there is an unbroken chain between +the religious composers of the sixteenth century and the theatrical +composers of the seventeenth. We may follow him thus far without +believing that the theatrical composers of the seventeenth century had +too great an influence on the secular composers of the present day. + + +III + +All the world dances in Spain, at least it would seem so, in reading +over the books of the Marco Polos who have made voyages of discovery +on the Iberian peninsula. Guitars seem to be as common there as +pea-shooters in New England, and strumming seems to set the feet +a-tapping and voices a-singing, what, they care not. (Havelock Ellis +says: “It is not always agreeable to the Spaniard to find that dancing +is regarded by the foreigner as a peculiar and important Spanish +institution. Even Valera, with his wide culture, could not escape +this feeling; in a review of a book about Spain by an American author +entitled ‘The Land of the Castanet’--a book which he recognized as full +of appreciation for Spain--Valera resented the title. It is, he says, +as though a book about the United States should be called ‘The Land of +Bacon.’”) Oriental colour is streaked through and through the melodies +and harmonies, many of which betray their Arabian origin; others are +_flamenco_, or gipsy. The dances, almost invariably accompanied by +song, are generally in 3-4 time or its variants such as 6-8 or 3-8; +the tango, of course, is in 2-4. But the dancers evolve the most +elaborate inter-rhythms out of these simple measures, creating thereby +a complexity of effect which defies any comprehensible notation on +paper. As it is on this _fioriture_, if I may be permitted to use the +word in this connection, of the dancer that the sophisticated composer +bases some of his most natural and national effects, I shall linger on +the subject. La Argentina has re-arranged many of the Spanish dances +for purposes of the concert stage, but in her translation she has +retained in a large measure this interesting complication of rhythm, +marking the irregularity of the beat, now with a singularly complicated +detonation of heel-tapping, now with a sudden bend of a knee, now with +the subtle quiver of an eyelash, now with a shower of castanet sparks +(an instrument which requires a hard tutelage for its complete mastery; +Richard Ford tells us that even the children in the streets of Spain +rap shells together, to become self-taught artists in the use of it). +Chabrier, in his visit to Spain with his wife in 1882, attempted to +note down some of these rhythmic variations achieved by the dancers +while the musicians strummed their guitars, and he was partially +successful. But all in all he only succeeded in giving in a single +measure each variation; he did not attempt to weave them into the +intricate pattern which the Spanish women contrive to make of them. + +There is a singular similarity to be observed between this heel-tapping +and the complicated drum-tapping of the African negroes of certain +tribes. In his book “Afro-American Folksongs” H. E. Krehbiel thus +describes the musical accompaniment of the dances in the Dahoman +Village at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago: “These dances +were accompanied by choral song and the rhythmical and harmonious +beating of drums and bells, the song being in unison. The harmony was +a tonic major triad broken up rhythmically in a most intricate and +amazingly ingenious manner. The instruments were tuned with excellent +justness. The fundamental tone came from a drum made of a hollowed log +about three feet long with a single head, played by one who seemed +to be the leader of the band, though there was no giving of signals. +This drum was beaten with the palms of the hands. A variety of smaller +drums, some with one, some with two heads, were beaten variously with +sticks and fingers. The bells, four in number, were of iron and were +held mouth upward and struck with sticks. The players showed the most +remarkable rhythmical sense and skill that ever came under my notice. +Berlioz in his supremest effort with his army of drummers produced +nothing to compare in artistic interest with the harmonious drumming +of these savages. The fundamental effect was a combination of double +and triple time, the former kept by the singers, the latter by the +drummers, but it is impossible to convey the idea of the wealth of +detail achieved by the drummers by means of exchange of the rhythms, +syncopation of both simultaneously, and dynamic devices. Only by +making a score of the music could this have been done. I attempted to +make such a score by enlisting the help of the late John C. Filmore, +experienced in Indian music, but we were thwarted by the players +who, evidently divining our purpose when we took out our notebooks, +mischievously changed their manner of playing as soon as we touched +pencil to paper.” + +The resemblance between negro and Spanish music is very noticeable. Mr. +Krehbiel says that in South America Spanish melody has been imposed +on negro rhythm. In the dances of the people of Spain, as Chabrier +points out, the melody is often practically nil; the effect is rhythmic +(an effect which is emphasized by the obvious harmonic and melodic +limitations of the guitar, which invariably accompanies all singers +and dancers). If there were a melody or if the guitarists played well +(which they usually do not) one could not distinguish its contours +what with the cries of Olè! and the heel-beats of the performers. +Spanish melodies, indeed, are often scraps of tunes, like the African +negro melodies. The habanera is a true African dance, taken to Spain +by way of Cuba, as Albert Friedenthal points out in his book, “Musik, +Tanz, und Dichtung bei den Kreolen Amerikas.” Whoever was responsible, +Arab, negro, or Moor (Havelock Ellis says that the dances of Spain +are closely allied with the ancient dances of Greece and Egypt), the +Spanish dances betray their oriental origin in their complexity of +rhythm (a complexity not at all obvious on the printed page, as so +much of it depends on dancer, guitarist, singer, and even public!), +and the _fioriture_ which decorate their melody when melody occurs. +While Spanish religious music is perhaps not distinctively Spanish, the +dances invariably display marked national characteristics; it is on +these, then (some in greater, some in less degree), that the composers +in and out of Spain have built their most atmospheric inspirations, +their best pictures of popular life in the Iberian peninsula. A good +deal of the interest of this music is due to the important part the +guitar plays in its construction; the modulations are often contrary +to all rules of harmony and (yet, some would say) the music seems +to be effervescent with variety and fire. Of the guitarists Richard +Ford (“Gatherings from Spain”) says: “The performers seldom are very +scientific musicians; they content themselves with striking the +chords, sweeping the whole hand over the strings, or flourishing, +and tapping the board with the thumb, at which they are very expert. +Occasionally in the towns there is some one who has attained more +power over this ungrateful instrument; but the attempt is a failure. +The guitar responds coldly to Italian words and elaborate melody, +which never come home to Spanish ears or hearts.” (An exception must +be made in the case of Miguel Llobet. I first heard him play at Pitts +Sanborn’s concert at the Punch and Judy Theatre (April 17, 1916) for +the benefit of Hospital 28 in Bourges, France, and he made a deep +impression on me. In one of his numbers, the _Spanish Fantasy_ of +Tárrega, he astounded and thrilled me. He seemed at all times to exceed +the capacity of his instrument, obtaining a variety of colour which +was truly amazing. In this particular number he not only plucked the +keyboard but the fingerboard as well, in intricate and rapid _tempo_; +seemingly two different kinds of instruments were playing. But at all +times he variated his tone; sometimes he made the instrument sound +almost as though it had been played by wind and not plucked. Especially +did I note a suggestion of the bagpipe. A true artist. None of the +music, the fantasy mentioned, a serenade of Albeniz, and a Menuet of +Tor, was particularly interesting, although the Fantasia contained +some fascinating references to folk-dance tunes. There is nothing +sensational about Llobet, a quiet prim sort of man; he sits quietly in +his chair and makes music. It might be a harp or a ’cello--no striving +for personal effect.) + +The Spanish dances are infinite in number and for centuries back +they seem to form part and parcel of Spanish life. Discussion as to +how they are danced is a feature of the descriptions. No two authors +agree, it would seem; to a mere annotator the fact is evident that +they are danced differently on different occasions. It is obvious that +they are danced differently in different provinces. The Spaniards, as +Richard Ford points out, are not too willing to give information to +strangers, frequently because they themselves lack the knowledge. Their +statements are often misleading, sometimes intentionally so. They +do not understand the historical temperament. Until recently many of +the art treasures and archives of the peninsula were but poorly kept. +Those who lived in the shadow of the Alhambra admired only its shade. +It may be imagined that there has been even less interest displayed in +recording the folk-dances. “Dancing in Spain is now a matter which few +know anything about,” writes Havelock Ellis, “because every one takes +it for granted that he knows all about it; and any question on the +subject receives a very ready answer which is usually of questionable +correctness.” Of the music of the dances we have many records, and that +they are generally in 3-4 time or its variants we may be certain. As +to whether they are danced by two women, a woman and a man, or a woman +alone, the authorities do not always agree. The confusion is added to +by the oracular attitude of the scribes. It seems quite certain to me +that this procedure varies. That the animated picture almost invariably +possesses great fascination there are only too many witnesses to prove. +I myself can testify to the marvel of some of them, set to be sure in +strange frames, the Feria in Paris, for example; but even without the +surroundings, which Spanish dances demand, the diablerie, the shivering +intensity of these fleshly women, always wound tight with such +shawls as only the mistresses of kings might wear in other countries, +have drawn taut the _real thrill_. It is dancing which enlists the +co-operation not only of the feet and legs, but of the arms and, in +fact, the entire body. + +The smart world in Spain to-day dances much as the smart world does +anywhere else, although it does not, I am told, hold a brief for our +tango, which Mr. Krehbiel suggests is a corruption of the original +African habanera. But in older days many of the dances, such as the +pavana, the sarabande, and the gallarda, were danced at the court and +were in favour with the nobility. (Although presumably of Italian +origin, the pavana and gallarda were more popular in Spain than in +Rome. Fuertes says that the sarabande was invented in the middle of +the sixteenth century by a dancer called Zarabanda who was a native of +either Seville or Guayaquil.) The pavana, an ancient dance of grave and +stately measure, was much in vogue in the sixteenth and seventeenth +centuries. An explanation of its name is that the figures executed +by the dancers bore a resemblance to the semi-circular wheel-like +spreading of the tail of a peacock. The gallarda (French, gaillard) was +usually danced as a relief to the pavana (and indeed often follows it +in the dance-suites of the classical composers in which these forms all +figure). The jacara, or more properly xacara, of the sixteenth century, +was danced in accompaniment to a romantic, swashbuckling ditty. The +Spanish folias were a set of dances danced to a simple tune treated +in a variety of styles with very free accompaniment of castanets +and bursts of song. Corelli in Rome in 1700 published twenty-four +variations in this form, which have been played in our day by Fritz +Kreisler and other violinists. + +The names of the modern Spanish dances are often confused in the +descriptions offered by observing travellers, for the reasons already +noted. Hundreds of these descriptions exist, and it is difficult to +choose the most telling of them. Gertrude Stein, who has spent the last +two years in Spain, has noted the rhythm of several of these dances +by the mingling of her original use of words with the ingratiating +medium of _vers libre_. She has succeeded, I think, better than some +musicians in suggesting the intricacies of the rhythm. I should like to +transcribe one of these attempts here, but that I have not the right to +do as I have only seen them in manuscript; they have not yet appeared +in print. These pieces are in a sense the thing itself--I shall have +to fall back on descriptions of the thing. The tirana, a dance common +to the province of Andalusia, is accompanied by song. It has a decided +rhythm, affording opportunities for grace and gesture, the women toying +with their aprons, the men flourishing hats and handkerchiefs. The +polo, or olè, is now a gipsy dance. Mr. Ellis asserts that it is a +corruption of the sarabande! He goes on to say, “The so-called gipsy +dances of Spain are Spanish dances which the Spaniards are tending to +relinquish but which the gipsies have taken up with energy and skill.” +(This theory might be warmly contested.) The bolero, a comparatively +modern dance, came to Spain through Italy. Mr. Philip Hale points out +the fact that the bolero and the cachucha (which, by the way, one +seldom hears of nowadays) were the popular Spanish dances when Mesdames +Faviani and Dolores Tesrai, and their followers, Mlle. Noblet and Fanny +Elssler, visited Paris. Fanny Elssler indeed is most frequently seen +pictured in Spanish costume, and the cachucha was danced by her as +often, I fancy, as Mme. Pavlowa dances _Le Cygne_ of Saint-Saëns. Anna +de Camargo, who acquired great fame as a dancer in France in the early +eighteenth century, was born in Brussels but was of Spanish descent. +She relied, however, on the Italian classic style for her success +rather than on national Spanish dances. The seguidilla is a gipsy +dance which has the same rhythm as the bolero but is more animated and +stirring. Examples of these dances, and of the jota, fandango, and +the sevillana, are to be met with in the compositions listed in the +first section of this article, in the appendices of Soriano Fuertes’s +“History of Spanish Music,” in Grove’s Dictionary, in the numbers of +“S. I. M.” in which the letters of Emmanuel Chabrier occur, and in +collections made by P. Lacome, published in Paris. + +The jota is another dance in 3-4 time. Every province in Spain has its +own jota, but the most famous variations are those of Aragon, Valencia, +and Navarre. It is accompanied by the guitar, the _bandarria_ (similar +to the guitar), small drum, castanets, and triangle. Mr. Hale says +that its origin in the twelfth century is attributed to a Moor named +Alben Jot who fled from Valencia to Aragon. “The jota,” he continues, +“is danced not only at merrymakings but at certain religious festivals +and even in watching the dead. One called the ‘Natividad del Señor’ +(nativity of our Lord) is danced on Christmas eve in Aragon, and is +accompanied by songs, and jotas are sung and danced at the crossroads, +invoking the favour of the Virgin, when the festival of Our Lady del +Pilar is celebrated at Saragossa.” + +Havelock Ellis’s description of the jota is worth reproducing: +“The Aragonaise jota, the most important and typical dance outside +Andalusia, is danced by a man and a woman, and is a kind of combat +between them; most of the time they are facing each other, both using +castanets and advancing and retreating in an apparently aggressive +manner, the arms alternately slightly raised and lowered, and the legs, +with a seeming attempt to trip the partner, kicking out alternately +somewhat sidewise, as the body is rapidly supported first on one side +and then on the other. It is a monotonous dance, with immense rapidity +and vivacity in its monotony, but it has not the deliberate grace and +fascination, the happy audacities of Andalusian dancing. There is, +indeed, no faintest suggestion of voluptuousness in it, but it may +rather be said, in the words of a modern poet, Salvador Rueda, to have +in it ‘the sound of helmets and plumes and lances and banners, the +roaring of cannon, the neighing of horses, the shock of swords.’” + +Chabrier, in his astounding and amusing letters from Spain, gives us +vivid pictures and interesting information. This one, written to his +friend, Edouard Moullé, from Granada, November 4, 1882, appeared in “S. +I. M.” April 15, 1911 (I have omitted the musical illustrations, which, +however, possess great value for the student): “In a month I must leave +adorable Spain ... and say good-bye to the Spaniards,--because, I say +this only to you, they are very nice, the little girls! I have not seen +a really ugly woman since I have been in Andalusia: I do not speak of +the feet, they are so small that I have never seen them; the hands are +tiny and well-kept and the arms of an exquisite contour; I speak only +of what one can see, but they show a good deal; add the arabesques, the +side-curls, and other ingenuities of the coiffure, the inevitable fan, +the flower and the comb in the hair, placed well behind, the shawl of +Chinese crêpe, with long fringe and embroidered in flowers, knotted +around the figure, the arm bare, and the eye protected by eyelashes +which are long enough to curl; the skin of dull white or orange colour, +according to the race, all this smiling, gesticulating, dancing, +drinking, and careless to the last degree.... + +“That is the Andalusian. + +“Every evening we go with Alice to the café-concerts where the +malagueñas, the Soledas, the Sapateados, and the Peteneras are sung; +then the dances, absolutely Arab, to speak truth; if you could see +them wriggle, unjoint their hips, contortion, I believe you would not +try to get away!... At Malaga the dancing became so intense that I +was compelled to take my wife away; it wasn’t even amusing any more. +I can’t write about it, but I remember it and I will describe it to +you.--I have no need to tell you that I have noted down many things; +the tango, a kind of dance in which the women imitate the pitching of +a ship (_le tangage du navire_) is the only dance in 2 time; all the +others, all, are in 3-4 (Seville) or in 3-8 (Malaga and Cadiz);--in +the North it is different, there is some music in 5-8, very curious. +The 2-4 of the tango is always like the habanera; this is the picture: +one or two women dance, two silly men play it doesn’t matter what on +their guitars, and five or six women howl, with excruciating voices +and in triplet figures impossible to note down because they change +the air--every instant a new scrap of tune. They howl a series of +figurations with syllables, words, rising voices, clapping hands which +strike the six quavers, emphasizing the third and the sixth, cries of +Anda! Anda! La Salud! eso es la Maraquita! gracia, nationidad! Baila, +la chiquilla! Anda! Anda! Consuelo! Olè, la Lola, olè la Carmen! que +gracia! que elegancia! all that to excite the young dancer. It is +vertiginous--it is unspeakable! + +“The Sevillana is another thing: it is in 3-4 time (and with +castanets).... All this becomes extraordinarily alluring with two +curls, a pair of castanets and a guitar. It is impossible to write down +the malagueña. It is a melopœia, however, which has a form and which +always ends on the dominant, to which the guitar furnishes 3-8 time, +and the spectator (when there is one) seated beside the guitarist, +holds a cane between his legs and beats the syncopated rhythm; the +dancers themselves instinctively syncopate the measures in a thousand +ways, striking with their heels an unbelievable number of rhythms.... +It is all rhythm and dance: the airs scraped out by the guitarist +have no value; besides, they cannot be heard on account of the cries +of Anda! la chiquilla! que gracia! que elegancia! Anda! Olè! Olè! la +chiquirritita! and the more the cries the more the dancer laughs with +her mouth wide open, and turns her hips, and is mad with her body....” + +As it is on these dances that composers invariably base their Spanish +music (not alone Albeniz, Chapí, Bretón, and Granados, but Chabrier, +Ravel, Laparra, and Bizet, as well) we may linger somewhat longer on +their delights. The following compelling description is from Richard +Ford’s highly readable “Gatherings from Spain”: “The dance which is +closely analogous to the _Ghowasee_ of the Egyptians, and the _Nautch_ +of the Hindoos, is called the _Olè_ by Spaniards, the _Romalis_ by +their gipsies; the soul and essence of it consists in the expression of +a certain sentiment, one not indeed of a very sentimental or correct +character. The ladies, who seem to have no bones, resolve the problem +of perpetual motion, their feet having comparatively a sinecure, as the +whole person performs a pantomime, and trembles like an aspen leaf; the +flexible form and Terpsichore figure of a young Andalusian girl--be she +gipsy or not--is said, by the learned, to have been designed by nature +as the fit frame for her voluptuous imagination. + +“Be that as it may, the scholar and classical commentator will every +moment quote Martial, etc., when he beholds the unchanged balancing of +hands, raised as if to catch showers of roses, the tapping of the feet, +and the serpentine quivering movements. A contagious excitement seizes +the spectators, who, like Orientals, beat time with their hands in +measured cadence, and at every pause applaud with cries and clappings. +The damsels, thus encouraged, continue in violent action until nature +is all but exhausted; then aniseed brandy, wine, and _alpisteras_ are +handed about, and the fête, carried on to early dawn, often concludes +in broken heads, which here are called ‘gipsy’s fare.’ These dances +appear, to a stranger from the chilly north, to be more marked by +energy than by grace, nor have the legs less to do than the body, hips, +and arms. The sight of this unchanged pastime of antiquity, which +excites the Spaniard to frenzy, rather disgusts an English spectator, +possibly from some national malorganization, for, as Molière says, +‘l’Angleterre a produit des grands hommes dans les sciences et les +beaux arts, mais pas un grand danseur--allez lire l’histoire.’” (A fact +as true in our day as it was in Molière’s.) + +On certain days the sevillana is danced before the high altar of +the cathedral at Seville. The Reverend Henry Cart de Lafontaine +(“Proceedings of the Musical Association”; London, thirty-third +session, 1906-7) gives the following account of it, quoting a “French +author”: “While Louis XIII was reigning over France, the Pope heard +much talk of the Spanish dance called the ‘Sevillana.’ He wished to +satisfy himself, by actual eye-witness, as to the character of this +dance, and expressed his wish to a bishop of the diocese of Seville, +who every year visited Rome. Evil tongues make the bishop responsible +for the primary suggestion of the idea. Be that as it may, the bishop, +on his return to Seville, had twelve youths well instructed in all +the intricate measures of this Andalusian dance. He had to choose +youths, for how could he present maidens to the horrified glance of +the Holy Father? When his little troop was thoroughly schooled and +perfected, he took the party to Rome, and the audience was arranged. +The ‘Sevillana’ was danced in one of the rooms of the Vatican. The Pope +warmly complimented the young executants, who were dressed in beautiful +silk costumes of the period. The bishop humbly asked for permission to +perform this dance at certain fêtes in the cathedral church at Seville, +and further pleaded for a restriction of this privilege to that church +alone. The Pope, hoist by his own petard, did not like to refuse, but +granted the privilege with this restriction, that it should only last +so long as the costumes of the dancers were wearable. Needless to say, +these costumes are, therefore, objects of constant repair, but they are +supposed to retain their identity even to this day. And this is the +reason why the twelve boys who dance the ‘Sevillana’ before the high +altar in the cathedral on certain feast days are dressed in the costume +belonging to the reign of Louis XIII.” + +This is a very pretty story, but it is not uncontradicted.... Has any +statement been made about Spanish dancing or music which has been +allowed to go uncontradicted? Look upon that picture and upon this: “As +far as it is possible to ascertain from records,” says Rhoda G. Edwards +in the “Musical Standard,” “this dance would seem always to have been +in use in Seville cathedral; when the town was taken from the Moors in +the thirteenth century it was undoubtedly an established custom and in +1428 we find the six boys recognized as an integral part of the chapter +by Pope Eugenius IV. The dance is known as the (_sic_) ‘Los Scises,’ +or dance of the six boys who, with four others, dance it before the +high altar at Benediction on the three evenings before Lent and in +the octaves of Corpus Christi and La Purissima (the conception of Our +Lady). The dress of the boys is most picturesque, page costumes of the +time of Philip III being worn, blue for La Purissima and red satin +doublets slashed with blue for the other occasion; white hats with blue +and white feathers are also worn whilst dancing. The dance is usually +of twenty-five minutes’ duration and in form seems quite unique, not +resembling any of the other Spanish dance-forms, or in fact those of +any other country. The boys accompany the symphony on castanets and +sing a hymn in two parts whilst dancing.” + +From another author we learn that religious dancing is to be seen +elsewhere in Spain than at Seville cathedral. At one time, it is said +to have been common. The pilgrims to the shrine of the Virgin at +Montserrat were wont to dance, and dancing took place in the churches +of Valencia, Toledo, and Jurez. Religious dancing continued to be +common, especially in Catalonia up to the seventeenth century. An +account of the dance in the Seville cathedral may be found in “Los +Españoles Pintados por si Mismos” (pages 287-91). + +This very incomplete and rambling record of Spanish dancing should +include some mention of the fandango. The origin of the word is +obscure, but the dance is obviously one of the gayest and wildest of +the Spanish dances. Like the malagueña it is in 3-8 time, but it is +quite different in spirit from that sensuous form of terpsichorean +enjoyment. La Argentina informs me that “fandango” in Spanish suggests +very much what “bachanale” does in English or French. It is a very old +dance, and may be a survival of a Moorish dance, as Desrat suggests. +Mr. Philip Hale found the following account of it somewhere: + +“Like an electric shock, the notes of the fandango animate all hearts. +Men and women, young and old, acknowledge the power of this air over +the ears and soul of every Spaniard. The young men spring to their +places, rattling castanets, or imitating their sound by snapping their +fingers. The girls are remarkable for the willowy languor and lightness +of their movements, the voluptuousness of their attitudes--beating the +exactest time with tapping heels. Partners tease and entreat and pursue +each other by turns. Suddenly the music stops, and each dancer shows +his skill by remaining absolutely motionless, bounding again in the +full life of the fandango as the orchestra strikes up. The sound of the +guitar, the violin, the rapid tic-tac of heels (_taconeos_), the crack +of fingers and castanets, the supple swaying of the dancers, fill the +spectators with ecstasy. + +“The music whirls along in a rapid triple time. Spangles glitter; the +sharp clank of ivory and ebony castanets beats out the cadence of +strange, throbbing, deafening notes--assonances unknown to music, +but curiously characteristic, effective, and intoxicating. Amidst the +rustle of silks, smiles gleam over white teeth, dark eyes sparkle and +droop, and flash up again in flame. All is flutter and glitter, grace +and animation--quivering, sonorous, passionate, seductive. _Olè! Olè!_ +Faces beam and burn. _Olè! Olè!_ + +“The bolero intoxicates, the fandango inflames.” + +It can be well understood that the study of Spanish dancing and its +music must be carried on in Spain. Mr. Ellis tells us why: “Another +characteristic of Spanish dancing, and especially of the most typical +kind called flamenco, lies in its accompaniments, and particularly +in the fact that under proper conditions all the spectators are +themselves performers.... Thus it is that at the end of a dance an +absolute silence often falls, with no sound of applause: the relation +of performers and public has ceased to exist.... The finest Spanish +dancing is at once killed or degraded by the presence of an indifferent +or unsympathetic public, and that is probably why it cannot be +transplanted, but remains local.” + +At the end of a dance an absolute silence often falls.... I am again +in an underground café in Amsterdam. It is the eve of the Queen’s +birthday, and the Dutch are celebrating. The low, smoke-wreathed room +is crowded with students, soldiers, and women. Now a weazened female +takes her place at the piano, on a slightly raised platform at one side +of the room. She begins to play. The dancing begins. It is not woman +with man; the dancing is informal. Some dance together, and some dance +alone; some sing the melody of the tune, others shriek, but all make +a noise. Faster and faster and louder and louder the music is pounded +out, and the dancing becomes wilder and wilder. A tray of glasses is +kicked from the upturned palm of a sweaty waiter. Waiter, broken glass, +dancer, all lie, a laughing heap, on the floor. A soldier and a woman +stand in opposite corners, facing the corners; then without turning, +they back towards the middle of the room at a furious pace; the +collision is appalling. Hand in hand the mad dancers encircle the room, +throwing confetti, beer, anything. A heavy stein crushes two teeth--the +wound bleeds--but the dancer does not stop. Noise and action and colour +all become synonymous. There is no escape from the force. I am dragged +into the circle. Suddenly the music stops. All the dancers stop. The +soldier no longer looks at the woman by his side; not a word is spoken. +People lumber towards chairs. The woman looks for a glass of water +to assuage the pain of her bleeding mouth. I think Jaques-Dalcroze is +right when he seeks to unite spectator and actor, drama and public. + + +IV + +In the preceding section I may have too strongly insisted upon the +relation of the folk-song to the dance. It is true that the two are +seldom separated in performance (although not all songs are danced; +for example, the _cañas_ and _playeras_ of Andalusia). However, most +of the folk-songs of Spain are intended to be danced; they are built +on dance rhythms and they bear the names of dances. Thus the jota is +always danced to the same music, although the variations are great at +different times and in different provinces. It is, of course, when +the folk-songs are danced that they make their best effect, in the +polyrhythm achieved by the opposing rhythms of guitar-player, dancer, +and singer. When there is no dancer the defect is sometimes overcome by +some one tapping a stick on the ground in imitation of resounding heels. + +Blind beggars have a habit of singing the songs, in certain provinces, +with a wealth of florid ornament, such ornament as is always +associated with oriental airs in performance, and this ornament still +plays a considerable rôle when the vocalist becomes an integral part +of the accompaniment for a dancer. Chabrier gives several examples of +it in one of his letters. In the circumstances it can readily be seen +that Spanish folk-songs written down are pretty bare recollections of +the real thing, and when sung by singers who have no knowledge of the +traditional manner of performing them they are likely to sound fairly +banal. The same thing might be said of the negro folk-songs of America, +or the folk-songs of Russia or Hungary, but with much less truth, for +the folk-songs of these countries usually possess a melodic interest +which is seldom inherent in the folk-songs of Spain. To make their +effect they must be performed by Spaniards, as nearly as possible after +the manner of the people. Indeed, their spirit and their polyrhythmic +effects are much more essential to their proper interpretation than +their melody, as many witnesses have pointed out. + +Spanish music, indeed, much of it, is actually unpleasant to Western +ears; it lacks the sad monotony and the wailing intensity of true +oriental music; much of it is loud and blaring, like the hot sunglare +of the Iberian peninsula. However, many a Western or Northern European +has found pleasure in listening by the hour to the strains, which often +sound as if they were improvised, sung by some beggar or mountaineer. + +The collections of these songs are not in any sense complete and few of +them attempt more than a collocation of the songs of one locality or +people. Deductions have been drawn. For example it is noted that the +Basque songs are irregular in melody and rhythm and are further marked +by unusual tempos, 5-8, or 7-4. In Aragon and Navarre the popular song +(and dance) is the jota; in Galicia, the seguidilla; the Catalonian +songs resemble the folk-tunes of Southern France. The Andalusian songs, +like the dances of that province, are the most beautiful of all, often +truly oriental in their rhythm and floridity. In Spain the gipsy has +become an integral part of the popular life, and it is difficult at +times to determine what is _flamenco_ and what is Spanish. However, +collections (few to be sure) have been attempted of gipsy songs. + +Elsewhere in this rambling article I have touched on the _villancicos_ +and the early song-writers. To do justice to these subjects would +require a good deal more space and a different intention. Those who +are interested in them may pursue these matters in Pedrell’s various +works. The most available collection of Spanish folk-tunes is that +issued by P. Lacome and J. Puig y Alsubide (Paris, 1872). There are +several collections of Basque songs; Demofilo’s “Coleccion de Cantos +Flamencos” (Seville, 1881), Cecilio Ocon’s collection of Andalusian +folk-songs, and F. Rodriguez Marin’s “Cantos Populares Españoles” +(Seville, 1882-3) may also be mentioned. + + +V + +After the bullfight the most popular form of amusement in Spain is +the zarzuela, the only distinctive art-form which Spanish music has +evolved, but there has been no progress; the form has not changed, +except perhaps to degenerate, since its invention in the early +seventeenth century. Soriano Fuertes and other writers have devoted +pages to grieving because Spanish composers have not taken occasion to +make something grander and more important out of the zarzuela. The fact +remains that they have not, although, small and great alike, they have +all taken a hand at writing these entertainments. But as they found +the zarzuela, so they have left it. It must be conceded that the form +is quite distinct from that of opera and should not be confused with +it. And the Spaniards are probably right when they assert that the +zarzuela is the mother of the French opéra-bouffe. At least it must be +admitted that Offenbach and Lecocq and their precursors owe something +of the germ of their inspiration to the Spanish form. To-day the melody +chests of the zarzuela markets are plundered to find tunes for French +_revues_, and such popular airs as _La Paraguaya_ and _Y ... Como le +Vá?_ were originally danced and sung in Spanish theatres. The composer +of these airs, J. Valverde _fils_, indeed found the French market so +good that he migrated to Paris, and for some time has been writing +_musique mélangée ... une moitié de chaque nation_. So _La Rose de +Grenade_, composed for Paris, might have been written for Spain, with +slight melodic alterations and tauromachian allusions in the book. + +The zarzuela is usually a one act piece (although sometimes it is +permitted to run into two or more acts) in which the music is freely +interrupted by spoken dialogue, and that in turn gives way to national +dances. Very often the entire score is danced as well as sung. The +subject is usually comic and often topical, although it may be serious, +poetic, or even tragic. The actors often introduce dialogue of +their own, “gagging” freely; sometimes they engage in long impromptu +conversations with members of the audience. They also embroider on the +music after the fashion of the great singers of the old Italian opera +(Dr. de Lafontaine asserts that Spanish audiences, even in cabarets, +demand embroidery of this sort). The music is spirited and lively, +and in the dances, Andalusian, _flamenco_, or Sevillan, as the case +may be, it attains its best results. H. V. Hamilton, in his essay on +the subject in Grove’s Dictionary, says, “The music is ... apt to be +vague in form when the national dance and folk-song forms are avoided. +The orchestration is a little blatant.” It will be seen that this +description suits Granados’s _Goyescas_ (the opera), which is on its +safest ground during the dances and becomes excessively vague at other +times; but _Goyescas_ is not a zarzuela, because there is no spoken +dialogue. Otherwise it bears the earmarks. A zarzuela stands somewhere +between a French _revue_ and opéra-comique. It is usually, however, +more informal in tone than the latter and often decidedly more serious +than the former. All the musicians in Spain since the form was invented +(excepting, of course, certain exclusively religious composers), and +most of the poets and playwrights, have contributed numerous examples. +Thus Calderon wrote the first zarzuela, and Lope de Vega contributed +words to entertainments much in the same order. In our day Spain’s +leading dramatist, Echegaray (died 1916), has written one of the most +popular zarzuelas, _Gigantes y Cabezudos_ (the music by Caballero). +The subject is the fiesta of Santa Maria del Pilar. It has had many a +long run and is often revived. Another very popular zarzuela, which +was almost, if not quite, heard in New York, is _La Gran Via_ (by +Valverde, _père_), which has been performed in London in extended +form. The principal theatres for the zarzuela in Madrid are (or were +until recently) that of the Calle de Jovellanos, called the Teatro de +Zarzuela, and the Apolo. Usually four separate zarzuelas are performed +in one evening before as many audiences. + +_La Gran Via_, which in some respects may be considered a typical +zarzuela, consists of a string of dance tunes, with no more +homogeneity than their national significance would suggest. There is +an introduction and polka, a waltz, a tango, a jota, a mazurka, a +schottische, another waltz, and a two-step (_paso-doble_). The tunes +have little distinction; nor can the orchestration be considered +brilliant. There is a great deal of noise and variety of rhythm, and +when presented correctly the effect must be precisely that of one of +the dance-halls described by Chabrier. The zarzuela, to be enjoyed, +in fact, must be seen in Spain. Like Spanish dancing it requires a +special audience to bring out its best points. There must be a certain +electricity, at least an element of sympathy, to carry the thing +through successfully. Examination of the scores of zarzuelas (many +of them have been printed and some of them are to be seen in our +libraries) will convince any one that Mr. Ellis is speaking mildly +when he says that the Spaniards love noise. However, the combination +of this noise with beautiful women, dancing, elaborate rhythm, and a +shouting audience, seems to almost equal the café-concert dancing and +the tauromachian spectacles in Spanish popular affection. (Of course, +as I have suggested, there are zarzuelas more serious melodically and +dramatically; but as _La Gran Via_ is frequently mentioned by writers +as one of the most popular examples, it may be selected as typical of +the larger number of these entertainments.) + +H. V. Hamilton says that the first performance of a zarzuela took +place in 1628 (Pedrell gives the date as October 29, 1629), during +the reign of Felipe IV, in the Palace of the Zarzuela (so-called +because it was surrounded by _zarzas_, brambles). It was called _El +Jardin de Falerina_; the text was by the great Calderon and the music +by Juan Risco, chapelmaster of the cathedral at Cordova, according to +Mr. Hamilton, who doubtless follows Soriano Fuertes on this detail. +Soubies, following the more modern studies of Pedrell, gives Jose Peyró +the credit. Pedrell, in his richly documented work, “Teatro Lírico +Española anterior al siglo XIX,” attributes the music of this zarzuela +to Peyró and gives an example of it. The first Spanish opera dates from +the same period, Lope de Vega’s _La Selva sin Amor_ (1629). As a matter +of fact, many of the plays of Calderon and Lope de Vega were performed +with music to heighten the effect of the declamation, and musical +curtain-raisers and interludes were performed before and in the midst +of all of them. Lana, Palomares, Benavente and Hidalgo were among the +musicians who contributed music to the theatre of this period. Hidalgo +wrote the music for Calderon’s zarzuela, _Ni Amor se Libre de Amor_. To +the same group belong Miguel Ferrer, Juan de Navas, Sebastien de Navas, +and Jéronimo de la Torre. (Examples of the music of these men may be +found in the aforementioned “Teatro Lírico.”) Until 1659 zarzuelas +were written by the best poets and composers and frequently performed +on royal birthdays, at royal marriages, and on many other occasions; +but after that date the art fell into a decline and seems to have +been in eclipse during the whole of the eighteenth century. According +to Soriano Fuertes the beginning of the reign of Felipe V marked the +introduction of Italian opera into Spain (more popular than Spanish +opera there to this day) and the decadence of nationalism (whole pages +of Fuertes read very much like the plaints of modern English composers +about the neglect of national composers in their country). In 1829 +there was a revival of interest in Spanish music and a conservatory was +founded in Madrid. (For a discussion of this later period the reader +is referred to “La Opera Española en el Siglo XIX,” by Antonio Peña y +Goñi, 1881.) This interest has been fostered by Fuertes and Pedrell, +and the younger composers to-day are taking some account of it. There +is hope, indeed, that Spanish music may again take its place in the +world of art. + +Of course, the zarzuela did not spring into being out of nowhere and +nothing, and the true origins are not entirely obscure. It is generally +agreed that a priest, Juan del Encina (born at Salamanca, 1468), +was the true founder of the secular theatre in Spain. His dramatic +compositions are in the nature of eclogues based on Virgilian models. +In all of these there is singing and in one a dance. Isabel la Católica +in the fifteenth century always had at her command a troop of musicians +and poets who comforted and consoled her in her chapel with motets +and _plegarias_ (French, _prière_), and in the royal apartments with +_canciones_ and _villancicos_. (_Canciones_ are songs inclining towards +the ballad-form. _Villancicos_ are songs in the old Spanish measure; +they receive their name from their rustic character, as supposedly they +were first composed by the _villanos_ or peasants for the nativity and +other festivals of the church.) “It is necessary to search for the true +origins of the Spanish musical spectacle,” states Soubies, “in the +_villancicos_ and _cantacillos_ which alternated with the dialogue in +the works of Juan del Encina and Lucas Fernandez, without forgetting +the _ensaladas_, the _jacaras_, etc., which served as intermezzi and +curtain-raisers.” These were sung before the curtain, before the +drama was performed (and during the intervals, with jokes added) by +women in court dress, and later created a form of their own (besides +contributing to the creation of the zarzuela), the _tonadilla_, which, +accompanied by a guitar or violin and interspersed with dances, was +very popular for a number of years. H. V. Hamilton is probably on +sound ground when he says, “That the first zarzuela was written with +an express desire for expansion and development is, however, not so +certain as that it was the result of a wish to inaugurate the new house +of entertainment with something entirely original and novel.” + + +VI + +We have Richard Ford’s testimony that Spain was not very musical in his +day. The Reverend Henry Cart de Lafontaine says that the contemporary +musical services in the churches are not to be considered seriously +from an artistic point of view. Emmanuel Chabrier was impressed with +the fact that the music for dancing was almost entirely rhythmic in its +effect, strummed rudely on the guitar, the spectators meanwhile making +such a din that it was practically impossible to distinguish a melody, +had there been one. And all observers point at the Italian opera, which +is still the favourite opera in Spain (in Barcelona at the Liceo three +weeks of opera in Catalon is given after the regular season in Italian; +in Madrid at the Teatro Real the Spanish season is scattered through +the Italian), and at Señor Arbós’s concerts (the same Señor Arbós who +was once concert master of the Boston Symphony Orchestra), at which +Brandenburg concertos and Beethoven symphonies are more frequently +performed than works by Albeniz. Still there are, and have always been +during the course of the last century, Spanish composers, some of whom +have made a little noise in the outer world, although a good many have +been content to spend their artistic energy on the manufacture of +zarzuelas--in other words, to make a good deal of noise in Spain. In +most modern instances, however, there has been a revival of interest +in the national forms, and folk-song and folk-dance have contributed +their important share to the composers’ work. No one man has done more +to encourage this interest in nationalism than Felipe Pedrell, who may +be said to have begun in Spain the work which the “Five” accomplished +in Russia. Pedrell says in his “Handbook” (Barcelona, 1891; Heinrich +and Co.; French translation by Bertal; Paris, Fischbacher): “The +popular song, the voice of the people, the pure primitive inspiration +of the anonymous singer, passes through the alembic of contemporary art +and one obtains thereby its quintessence; the composer assimilates +it and then reveals it in the most delicate form that music alone is +capable of rendering form in its technical aspect, this thanks to the +extraordinary development of the technique of our art in this epoch. +The folk-song lends the accent, the background, and modern art lends +all that it possesses, its conventional symbolism and the richness of +form which is its patrimony. The frame is enlarged in such a fashion +that the _lied_ makes a corresponding development; could it be said +then that the national lyric drama is the same _lied_ expanded? Is +not the national lyric drama the product of the force of absorption +and creative power? Do we not see in it faithfully reflected not only +the artistic idiosyncrasy of each composer, but all the artistic +manifestations of the people?” There is always the search for new +composers in Spain and always the hope that a man may come who will +be acclaimed by the world. As a consequence, the younger composers +in Spain often receive more adulation than is their due. It must be +remembered that the most successful Spanish music is not serious, the +Spanish are more themselves in the lighter vein. + +I hesitate for a moment on the name of Martin y Solar, born at +Valencia; died at St. Petersburg, 1806; called “The Italian” by the +Spaniards on account of his musical style, and “lo Spagnuolo” by the +Italians. Da Ponte wrote several opera-books for him, _l’Arbore di +Diana_, _la Cosa Rara_, and _La Capricciosa Corretta_ (a version of +_The Taming of the Shrew_) among others. It is to be seen that he is +without importance if considered as a composer distinctively Spanish +and I have made this slight reference to him solely to recount how +Mozart quoted an air from one of his operas in the supper scene of +_Don Giovanni_. At the time Martin y Solar was better liked in Vienna +than Mozart himself and the air in question was as well-known as say +Musetta’s waltz is known to us. + +Juan Chrysostomo Arriaga, born in Bilbao 1808; died 1828 (these dates +are given in Grove: 1806-1826), is another matter. He might have become +better known had he lived longer. As it is, some of his music has been +performed in London and Paris, and perhaps in America, although I have +no record of it. He studied in Paris at the Conservatoire, under Fétis +for harmony, and Baillot for violin. Before he went to Paris even, as +a child, with no knowledge of the rules of harmony, he had written +an opera! Cherubini declared his fugue for eight voices on the words +in the Credo, “Et Vitam Venturi” a veritable chef d’œuvre, at least +there is a legend to this effect. In 1824 he wrote three quartets, an +overture, a symphony, a mass, and some French cantatas and romances. +Garcia considered his opera _Los Esclavas Felices_ so good that he +attempted, unsuccessfully, to secure for it a Paris hearing. It has +been performed in Bilbao, which city, I think, celebrated the centenary +of the composer’s birth. + +Manuel Garcia is better known to us as a singer, an impresario, and a +father, than as a composer! Still he wrote a good deal of music (so +did Mme. Malibran; for a list of the diva’s compositions I must refer +the reader to Arthur Pougin’s biography). Fétis enumerates seventeen +Spanish, nineteen Italian, and seven French operas by Garcia. He had +works produced in Madrid, at the Opéra in Paris (_La mort du Tasse_ +and _Florestan_), at the Italiens in Paris (_Fazzoletto_), at the +Opéra-Comique in Paris (_Deux Contrats_), and at many other theatres. +However, when all is said and done, Manuel Garcia’s reputation +still rests on his singing and his daughters. His compositions are +forgotten; nor was his music, much of it, probably, truly Spanish. +(However, I have heard a polo [serenade] from an opera called _El +Poeta Calculista_, which is so Spanish in accent and harmony--and so +beautiful--that it has found a place in a collection of folk-tunes!) + +Miguel Hilarion Eslava (born in Burlada, October 21, 1807, died at +Madrid, July 23, 1878) is chiefly famous for his compilation, the +“Lira Sacra-Hispana,” mentioned heretofore. He also composed over 140 +pieces of church music, masses, motets, songs, etc., after he had been +appointed chapelmaster of Queen Isabella in 1844, and several operas, +including _Il Solitario_, _La Tregua di Ptolemaide_, and _Pedro el +Cruél_. He also wrote several books of theory and composition: “Método +de Solfeo” (1846) and “Escuela de Armonía y Composición” in three parts +(harmony, composition, and melody). He edited (1855-6) the “Gaceta +Músical de Madrid.” + +There is the celebrated virtuoso, Pablo de Sarasate, who wrote music, +but his memory is perhaps better preserved in Whistler’s diabolical +portrait than in his own compositions. + +Felipe Pedrell (born February 19, 1841) is also perhaps more important +as a writer on musical subjects and for his influence on the younger +school of composers (he teaches in the conservatory of Barcelona, and +his attitude towards nationalism has already been discussed), than he +is as a composer. Still, Edouard Lopez-Chavarri does not hesitate to +pronounce his trilogy _Los Pireneos_ (Barcelona, 1902; the prologue +was performed in Venice in 1897) the most important work for the +theatre written in Spain. His first opera, _El Último Abencerrajo_, was +produced in Barcelona in 1874. Some of his other works are _Quasimodo_, +1875; _El Tasso a Ferrara_, _Cleopatra_, _Mazeppa_ (Madrid, 1881), +_Celestine_ (1904), and _La Matinada_ (1905). J. A. Fuller-Maitland +says that the influence of Wagner is traceable in all his stage work. +(Wagner is adored in Spain; _Parsifal_ was given eighteen times in one +month at the Liceo in Barcelona.) If this be true, his case will be +found to bear other resemblances to that of the Russian “Five,” who +found it difficult to exorcise all foreign influences in their pursuit +of nationalism. + +He was made a member of the Spanish Academy in 1894 and shortly +thereafter became Professor of Musical History and Æsthetics at the +Royal Conservatory at Madrid. Besides his “Hispaniae Schola Musica +Sacra” he has written a number of other books, and translated Richter’s +treatise on Harmony into Spanish. He has made several excursions into +the history of folk-lore and the principal results are contained in +“Músicos Anónimos” and “Por nuestra Música.” Other works are “Teatro +Lírico Español anterior al siglo XIX,” “Lírica Nacionalizada,” “De +Música Religiosa,” “Músiquerias y mas Músiquesias.” One of his books, +“Músicos Contemporáneos y de Otros Tempos” (in the library of the +Hispanic Society of New York) is very catholic in its range of subject. +It includes essays on the _Don Quixote_ of Strauss, the _Boris Godunow_ +of Moussorgsky, Smetana, Manuel Garcia, Edward Elgar, Jaques-Dalcroze, +Bruckner, Mahler, Albeniz, Palestrina, Busoni, and the tenth symphony +of Beethoven! + +In John Towers’s extraordinary compilation, “Dictionary-Catalogue of +Operas,” it is stated that Manuel Fernandez Caballero (born in 1835) +wrote sixty-two operas, and the names of them are given. He was a +pupil of Fuertes (harmony) and Eslava (composition) at the Madrid +Conservatory and later became very popular as a writer of zarzuelas. I +have already mentioned his _Gigantes y Cabezudos_ for which Echegaray +furnished the libretto. Among his other works in this form are _Los +Dineros del Sacristan_, _Los Africanistas_ (Barcelona, 1894), _El Cabo +Primero_ (Barcelona, 1895), and _La Rueda de la Fortuna_ (Madrid, 1896). + +At a concert given in the New York Hippodrome, April 3, 1911, Mme. +Tetrazzini sang a Spanish song, which was referred to the next day +by the reviewers of the “New York Times” and the “New York Globe.” +To say truth the soprano made a great effect with the song, although +it was written for a low voice. It was _Carceleras_, from Ruperto +Chapí’s zarzuela _Hija del Zebedeo_. Chapí was one of the most prolific +and popular composers of Spain during the last century. He produced +countless zarzuelas and nine children. He was born at Villena March +27, 1851, and he died March 25, 1909, a few months earlier than his +compatriot Isaac Albeniz. He was admitted to the conservatory of Madrid +in 1867 as a pupil of piano and harmony. In 1869 he obtained the first +prize for harmony and he continued to obtain prizes until in 1874 he +was sent to Rome by the Academy of Fine Arts. He remained for some +time in Italy and Paris. In 1875 the Teatro Real of Madrid played his +_La Hija de Jefté_ sent from Rome. The following is an incomplete +list of his operas and zarzuelas: _Via Libra_, _Los Gendarmes_, _El +Rey que Rabio_ (3 acts), _La Verbena de la Paloma_, _El Reclamo_, _La +Tempestad_, _La Bruja_, _La Leyenda del Monje_, _Las Campanados_, +_La Czarina_, _El Milagro de la Virgen_, _Roger de Flor_ (3 acts), +_Las Naves de Cortes, Circe_ (3 acts), _A qui Base Farsa un Hombre_, +_Juan Francisco_ (3 acts, 1905; rewritten and presented in 1908 as +_Entre Rocas_), _Los Madrileños_ (1908), _La Dama Roja_ (1 act, 1908), +_Hesperia_ (1908), _Las Calderas de Pedro Bolero_ (1909) and _Margarita +la Tornera_, presented just before his death without success. + +His other works include an oratorio, _Los Angeles_, a symphonic poem, +_Escenas de Capa y Espada_, a symphony in D, _Moorish Fantasy_ for +orchestra, a serenade for orchestra, a trio for piano, violin and +’cello, songs, etc. Chapí was president of the Society of Authors and +Composers, and when he died the King and Queen of Spain sent a telegram +of condolence to his widow. There is a copy of his zarzuela, _Blasones +y Talegas_ in the New York Public Library. + +I have already spoken of _Dolores_. It is one of a long series of +operas and zarzuelas written by Tomás Bretón y Hernandez (born at +Salamanca, December 29, 1850). First produced at Madrid, in 1895, it +has been sung with success in such distant capitals as Buenos Ayres and +Prague. I have been assured by a Spanish woman of impeccable taste that +_Dolores_ is charming, delightful in its fluent melody and its striking +rhythms, thoroughly Spanish in style, but certain to find favour in +America, if it were produced here. Our own Eleanora de Cisneros at +a Press Club Benefit in Barcelona appeared in Bretón’s zarzuela _La +Verbena de la Paloma_. Another of Bretón’s famous zarzuelas is _Los +Amantes de Ternel_ (Madrid, 1889). His works for the theatre further +include _Tabaré_, for which he wrote both words and music (Madrid, +1913); _Don Gil_ (Barcelona, 1914); _Garin_ (Barcelona, 1891); _Raquel_ +(Madrid, 1900); _Guzman el Bueno_ (Madrid, 1876); _El Certamen de +Cremona_ (Madrid, 1906); _El Campanere de Begoña_ (Madrid, 1878); _El +Barberillo en Orán_; _Corona contra Corona_ (Madrid, 1879); _Les Amores +de un Príncipe_ (Madrid, 1881); _El Clavel Rojo_ (1899); _Covadonga_ +(1901); and _El Domingo de Ramos_, words by Echegaray (Madrid, 1894). +His works for orchestra include: _En la Alhambra_, _Los Galeotes_, and +_Escenas Andaluzas_, a suite. He has written three string quartets, +a piano trio, a piano quintet, and an oratorio in two parts, _El +Apocalipsis_. + +Bretón is largely self-taught, and there is a legend that he devoured +by himself Eslava’s “School of Composition.” He further wrote the music +and conducted for a circus for a period of years. In the late seventies +he conducted an orchestra, founding a new society, the Union Artistico +Musical, which is said to have been the beginning of the modern +movement in Spain. It may throw some light on Spanish musical taste at +this period to mention the fact that the performance of Saint-Saëns’s +_Danse macabre_ almost created a riot. Later Bretón travelled. He +appeared as conductor in London, Prague, and Buenos Ayres, among other +cities outside of Spain, and when Dr. Karl Muck left Prague for Berlin, +he was invited to succeed him in the Bohemian capital. In the contest +held by the periodical “Blanco y Negro” in 1913 to decide who was the +most popular writer, poet, painter, musician, sculptor, and toreador in +Spain, Bretón as musician got the most votes.... He is at present the +head of the Royal Conservatory in Madrid. + +No Spanish composer (ancient or modern) is better known outside of +Spain than Isaac Albeniz (born May 29, 1861, at Comprodon; died at +Cambo, in the Pyrenees, May 25, 1909). His fame rests almost entirely +on twelve piano pieces (in four books) entitled collectively _Iberia_, +with which all concert-goers are familiar. They have been performed +here by Ernest Schelling, Leo Ornstein, and George Copeland, among +other virtuosi.... I think one or two of these pieces must be in the +répertoire of every modern pianist. Albeniz did not imbibe his musical +culture in Spain and to the day of his death he was more friendly with +the modern French group of composers than with those of his native +land. In his music he sees Spain with French eyes. He studied at +Paris with Marmontel; at Brussels with Louis Brassin; and at Weimar +with Liszt (he is mentioned in the long list of pupils in Huneker’s +biography of Liszt, but there is no further account of him in that +book); he studied composition with Jadassohn, Joseph Dupont, and F. +Kufferath. His symphonic poem, _Catalonia_, has been performed in Paris +by the Colonne Orchestra. I have no record of any American performance. +For a time he devoted himself to the piano. He was a virtuoso and he +has even played in London, but later in life he gave up this career for +composition. He wrote several operas and zarzuelas, among them a light +opera, _The Magic Opal_ (produced in London, 1893), _Enrico Clifford_ +(Barcelona, 1894; later heard in London), _Pepita Jiminez_ (Barcelona, +1895; afterwards given at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels), +and _San Anton de la Florida_ (produced in Brussels as _l’Ermitage +Fleurie_). He left unfinished at his death another opera destined for +production in Brussels at the Monnaie, _Merlin l’Enchanteur_. None +of his operas, with the exception of _Pepita Jiminez_, which has been +performed, I am told, in all Spanish countries, achieved any particular +success, and it is _Iberia_ and a few other piano pieces which will +serve to keep his memory green. + +Juan Bautista Pujol (1836-1898) gained considerable reputation in Spain +as a pianist and as a teacher of and composer for that instrument. He +also wrote a method for piano students entitled “Nuevo Mecanismo del +Piano.” His further claim to attention is due to the fact that he was +one of the teachers of Granados. + +The names of Pahissa (both as conductor and composer; one of his +symphonic works is called _The Combat_), Garcia Robles, represented by +an _Epitalame_, and Gibert, with two _Marines_, occur on the programmes +of the two concerts devoted in the main to Spanish music, at the second +of which (Barcelona, 1910; conductor Franz Beidler) Granados’s _Dante_ +was performed. + +E. Fernandez Arbós (born in Madrid, December 25, 1863) is better +known as a conductor and violinist than as composer. Still, he has +written music, especially for his own instrument. He was a pupil of +both Vieuxtemps and Joachim; and he has travelled much, teaching at +the Hamburg Conservatory, and acting as concertmaster for the Boston +Symphony and the Glasgow Orchestras. He has been a professor at the +Madrid conservatory for some time, giving orchestral and chamber +music concerts, both there and in London. He has written at least one +light opera, presumably a zarzuela, _El Centro de la Tierra_ (Madrid; +December 22, 1895); three trios for piano and strings, songs, and an +orchestral suite. + +I have already referred to the Valverdes, father and son. The father, +in collaboration with Federico Chueca, wrote _La Gran Via_. Many +another popular zarzuela is signed by him. The son has lived so long in +France that much of his music is cast in the style of the French music +hall; too it is in a popular vein. Still in his best tangos he strikes +a Spanish folk-note not to be despised. He wrote the music for the +play, _La Maison de Danse_, produced, with Polaire, at the Vaudeville +in Paris, and two of his operettas, _La Rose de Grenade_ and _l’Amour +en Espagne_, have been performed in Paris, not without success, I am +told by La Argentina, who danced in them. Other modern composers who +have been mentioned to me are Manuel de Falla, Joaquin Turina (George +Copeland has played his _A los Toros_), Usandihaga (who died in 1915), +the composer of _Los Golondrinos_, Oscar Erpla, Conrado del Campo, and +Enrique Morera. + +Enrique Granados was perhaps the first of the important Spanish +composers to visit North America. His place in the list of modern +Iberian musicians is indubitably a high one; though it must not be +taken for granted that _all_ the best music of Spain crosses the +Pyrenees (for reasons already noted it is evident that some Spanish +music can never be heard to advantage outside of Spain), and it is +by no means to be taken for granted that Granados was a greater +musician than several who dwell in Barcelona and Madrid without +making excursions into the outer world. In his own country I am told +Granados was admired chiefly as a pianist, and his performances on +that instrument in New York stamped him as an original interpretative +artist, one capable of extracting the last tonal meaning out of his own +compositions for the pianoforte, which are his best work. + +Shortly after his arrival in New York he stated to several reporters +that America knew nothing about Spanish music, and that Bizet’s +_Carmen_ was not in any sense Spanish. I hold no brief for _Carmen_ +being Spanish but it is effective, and that _Goyescas_ as an opera is +not. In the first place, its muddy and blatant orchestration would +detract from its power to please (this opinion might conceivably be +altered were the opera given under Spanish conditions in Spain). +The manuscript score of _Goyescas_ now reposes in the Museum of the +Hispanic Society, in that interesting quarter of New York where the +apartment houses bear the names of Goya and Velasquez, and it is +interesting to note that it is a _piano_ score. What has become of the +orchestral partition and who was responsible for it I do not know. It +is certain, however, that the miniature charm of the _Goyescas_ becomes +more obvious in the piano version, performed by Ernest Schelling or +the composer himself, than in the opera house. The growth of the work +is interesting. Fragments of it took shape in the composer’s brain +and on paper seventeen years ago, the result of the study of Goya’s +paintings in the Prado. These fragments were moulded into a suite in +1909 and again into an opera in 1914 (or before then). F. Periquet, +the librettist, was asked to fit words to the score, a task which he +accomplished with difficulty. Spanish is not an easy tongue to sing. +To Mme. Barrientos this accounts for the comparatively small number of +Spanish operas. _Goyescas_, like many a zarzuela, lags when the dance +rhythms cease. I find little joy myself in listening to “La Maja y +el Ruiseñor”; in fact, the entire last scene sounds banal to my ears. +In the four volumes of Spanish dances which Granados wrote for piano +(published by the Sociedad Anónima Casa Dotesio in Barcelona) I console +myself for my lack of interest in _Goyescas_. These lovely dances +combine in their artistic form all the elements of the folk-dances as +I have described them. They bespeak a careful study and an intimate +knowledge of the originals. And any pianist, amateur or professional, +will take joy in playing them. + +Enrique Granados y Campina was born July 27, 1867, at Lerida, +Catalonia. (He died March 24, 1916; a passenger on the _Sussex_, +torpedoed in the English Channel.) From 1884 to 1887 he studied +piano under Pujol and composition under Felipe Pedrell at the Madrid +Conservatory. That the latter was his master presupposed on his part +a valuable knowledge of the treasures of Spain’s past and that, I +think, we may safely allow him. There is, I am told, an interesting +combination of classicism and folk-lore in his work. At any rate, +Granados was a faithful disciple of Pedrell. In 1898 his zarzuela +_Maria del Carmen_ was produced in Madrid and has since been heard in +Valencia, Barcelona, and other Spanish cities. Five years later some +fragments of another opera, _Foletto_, were produced at Barcelona. +His third opera, _Liliana_, was produced at Barcelona in 1911. He +wrote numerous songs to texts by the poet, Apeles Mestres; Galician +songs, two symphonic poems, _La Nit del Mort_ and _Dante_ (performed +by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for the first time in America at the +concerts of November 5 and 6, 1915); a piano trio, string quartet, and +various books of piano music (_Danzas Españolas_, _Valses Poéticos_, +_Bocetos_, _etc._). + + +_New York, March 20, 1916._ + + + + +Shall We Realize Wagner’s Ideals? + + + + +Shall We Realize Wagner’s Ideals? + + +Historians of operatic phenomena have observed that fashions in music +change; the popular Donizetti and Bellini of one century are suffered +to exist during the next only for the sake of the opportunity they +afford to some brilliant songstress. New tastes arise, new styles +in music. Dukas’s generally unrelished (and occasionally highly +appreciated) _Ariane et Barbe-Bleue_ may not be powerful enough +to establish a place for itself in the répertoire, but its direct +influence on composers and its indirect influence on auditors make this +lyric drama highly important as an indication of the future of opera as +a fine art. Moussorgsky’s _Boris Godunow_, first given in this country +some forty years after its production in Russia, is another matter. +That score contains a real thrill in itself, a thrill which, once felt, +makes it difficult to feel the intensity of a Wagner drama again: +because Wagner is becoming just a little bit old-fashioned. _Lohengrin_ +and _Tannhäuser_ are becoming a trifle shop-worn. They do not glitter +with the glory of a _Don Giovanni_ or the invincible splendour of an +_Armide_. There are parts of _Die Walküre_ which are growing old. Now +Wagner, in many ways the greatest figure as opera composer which the +world has yet produced, could hold his place in the singing theatres +for many decades to come if some proper effort were made to do justice +to his dramas, the justice which in a large measure has been done to +his music. This effort at present is not being made. + +In the Metropolitan Opera House season of 1895-6, when Jean de Reszke +first sang Tristan in German, the opportunity seemed to be opened for +further breaks with what a Munich critic once dubbed “Die Bayreuther +Tradition oder Der missverstandene Wagner.” For up to that time, in +spite of some isolated examples, it had come to be considered, in +utter misunderstanding of Wagner’s own wishes and doctrines, as a +part of the technique of performing a Wagner music-drama to shriek, +howl, or bark the tones, rather than to sing them. There had been, I +have said, isolated examples of German singers, and artists of other +nationalities singing in German, who had _sung_ their phrases in these +lyric plays, but the appearance in the Wagner rôles, in German, of a +tenor whose previous appearances had been made largely in works in +French and Italian which demanded the use of what is called _bel canto_ +(it means only _good singing_) brought about a controversy which even +yet is raging in some parts of the world. Should Wagner be sung, in the +manner of Jean de Reszke, or shouted in the traditional manner? Was it +possible to sing the music and make the effect the Master expected? In +answer it may be said that never in their history have _Siegfried_, +_Tristan und Isolde_, and _Lohengrin_ met with such success as when +Jean de Reszke and his famous associates appeared in them, and it may +also be said that since that time there has been a consistent effort on +the part of the management of the Metropolitan Opera House (and other +theatres as well) to provide artists for these dramas who could sing +them, and sing them as Italian operas are sung, an effort to which +opera directors have been spurred by a growing insistence on the part +of the public. + +It was the first break with the Bayreuth bugbear, tradition, and it +might have been hoped that this tradition would be stifled in other +directions, with this successful precedent in mind; but such has not +been the case. As a result of this failure to follow up a beneficial +lead, in spite of orchestral performances which bring out the manifold +beauties of the scores and in spite of single impersonations of high +rank by eminent artists, we are beginning to see the Wagner dramas +falling into decline, long before the appointed time, because their +treatment has been held in the hands of Cosima Wagner, who--with the +best of intentions, of course--not only insists (at Bayreuth she is +mistress, and her influence on singers, conductors, stage directors and +scene painters throughout the world is very great) on the carrying out +of Wagner’s theories, as she understands them, and even when they are +only worthy of being ignored, but who also (whether rightly or wrongly) +is credited with a few traditions of her own. Wagner indeed invented +a new form of drama, but he did not have the time or means at his +disposal to develop an adequate technique for its performance. + +We are all familiar with the Bayreuth version of Wotan in _Die Walküre_ +which makes of that tragic father-figure a boisterous, silly old +scold (so good an artist as Carl Braun, whose Hagen portrait is a +masterpiece, has followed this tradition literally); we all know too +well the waking Brünnhilde who salutes the sun in the last act of +_Siegfried_ with gestures seemingly derived from the exercises of a +Swedish _turnverein_, following the harp arpeggios as best she may; +we remember how Wotan, seizing the sword from the dead Fasolt’s hand, +brandishes it to the tune of the sword _motiv_, indicating the coming +of the hero, Siegfried, as the gods walk over the rainbow bridge to +Walhalla at the end of _Das Rheingold_; we smile over the tame horse +which some chorus man, looking the while like a truck driver who is +not good to animals, holds for Brünnhilde while she sings her final +lament in _Götterdämmerung_; we laugh aloud when he assists her to lead +the unfiery steed, who walks as leisurely as a well-fed horse would +towards oats, into the burning pyre; we can still see the picture of +the three Rhine maidens, bobbing up and down jerkily behind a bit of +gauze, reminiscent of visions of mermaids at the Eden Musée; we all +have seen Tristan and Isolde, drunk with the love potion, swimming +(there is no other word to describe this effect) towards each other; +and no perfect Wagnerite can have forgotten the gods and the giants +standing about in the fourth scene of _Das Rheingold_ for all the world +as if they were the protagonists of a fantastic minstrel show. (At a +performance of _Parsifal_ in Chicago Vernon Stiles discovered while he +was on the stage that his suspenders, which held his tights in place, +had snapped. For a time he pressed his hands against his groin; this +method proving ineffectual, he finished the scene with his hands behind +his back, pressed firmly against his waist-line. As he left the stage, +at the conclusion of the act, breathing a sigh of relief, he met +Loomis Taylor, the stage director. “Did you think my new gesture was +due to nervousness?” he asked. “No,” answered Taylor, “I thought it was +Bayreuth tradition!”) + +These are a few of the Bayreuth precepts which are followed. There +are others. There are indeed many others. We all know the tendency +of conductors who have been tried at Bayreuth, or who have come +under the influence of Cosima Wagner, to drag out the _tempi_ to an +exasperating degree. I have heard performances of _Lohengrin_ which +were dragged by the conductor some thirty minutes beyond the ordinary +time. (Again the Master is held responsible for this tradition, but +though all composers like to have their own music last in performance +as long as possible, the tradition, perhaps, is just as authentic as +the story that Richard Strauss, when conducting _Tristan und Isolde_ +at the Prinz-Regenten-Theatre in Munich, saved twenty minutes on the +ordinary time it takes to perform the work in order to return as soon +as possible to an interrupted game of Skat.) + +But it is not tradition alone that is killing the Wagner dramas. In +many instances and in most singing theatres silly traditions are aided +in their work of destruction by another factor in hasty production. +I am referring to the frequent liberties which have been taken with +the intentions of the author. For, when expediency is concerned, no +account is taken of tradition, and, curiously enough, expediency +breaks with those traditions which can least stand being tampered +with. The changes, in other words, have not been made for the sake of +improvement, but through carelessness, or to save time or money, or +for some other cognate reason. An example of this sort of thing is the +custom of giving the _Ring_ dramas as a cycle in a period extending +over four weeks, one drama a week. It is also customary at the +Metropolitan Opera House in New York to entrust the rôle of Brünnhilde, +or of Siegfried, to a different interpreter in each drama, so that the +Brünnhilde who wakes in _Siegfried_ is not at all the Brünnhilde who +goes to sleep in _Die Walküre_. Then, although Brünnhilde exploits a +horse in _Götterdämmerung_, she possesses none in _Die Walküre_; none +of the other valkyries has a horse; Fricka’s goats have been taken +away from her, and she walks to the mountain-top holding her skirts +from under her feet for all the world as a lady of fashion might +as she ascended from a garden into a ballroom. At the Metropolitan +Opera House, and at other theatres where I have seen the dramas, the +decorations of the scenes of Brünnhilde’s falling asleep and of her +awakening are quite different. + +Naturally, ingenious explanations have been devised to fit these cases. +For instance, one is told that animals are _never_ at home on the +stage. This explanation suffices perhaps for the animals which do not +appear, but how about those which do? The vague phrase, “the exigencies +of the répertoire,” is mentioned as the reason for the extension of +the cycle over several weeks, that and the further excuse that the +system permits people from nearby towns to make weekly visits to the +metropolis. Of course, Wagner intended that each of the _Ring_ dramas +should follow its predecessor on succeeding days in a festival week. If +the _Ring_ were so given in New York every season with due preparation, +careful staging, and the best obtainable cast, the occasions would +draw audiences from all over America, as the festivals at Bayreuth and +Munich do indeed draw audiences from all over the world. Ingenuous +is the word which best describes the explanation for the change in +Brünnhildes; one is told that the out-of-town subscribers to the series +prefer to hear as many singers as possible. They wish to “compare” +Brünnhildes, so to speak. Perhaps the real reason for divergence +from common sense is the difficulty the director of the opera house +would have with certain sopranos if one were allowed the full set of +performances. As for the change in the setting of Brünnhilde’s rock it +is pure expediency, nothing else. In _Die Walküre_, in which, between +acts, there is plenty of time to change the scenery, a heavy built +promontory of rocks is required for the valkyrie brood to stand on. In +_Siegfried_ and _Götterdämmerung_, where the scenery must be shifted in +short order, this particular setting is utilized only for duets. The +heavier elements of the setting are no longer needed, and are dispensed +with. + +The mechanical devices demanded by Wagner are generally complied +with in a stupidly clumsy manner. The first scene of _Das Rheingold_ +is usually managed with some effect now, although the swimming of +the Rhine maidens, who are dressed in absurd long floating green +nightgowns, is carried through very badly and seemingly without an +idea that such things have been done a thousand times better in other +theatres; the changes of scene in _Das Rheingold_ are accomplished in +such a manner that one fears the escaping steam is damaging the gauze +curtains; the worm and the toad are silly contrivances; the effect of +the rainbow is never properly conveyed; the ride of the valkyries is +frankly evaded by most stage managers; the bird in _Siegfried_ flies +like a sickly crow; the final scene in _Götterdämmerung_ would bring a +laugh from a Bowery audience: some flat scenery flaps over, a number +of chorus ladies fall on their knees, there is much bulging about of a +canvas sea, and a few red lights appear in the sky; the transformation +scenes in _Parsifal_ are carried out with as little fidelity to +symbolism, or truth, or beauty; and the throwing of the lance in +_Parsifal_ is always seemingly a wire trick rather than a magical one. + +The scenery for the Wagner dramas, in all the theatres where I have +seen and heard them, has been built (and a great deal of it in +recent years from new designs) with a seemingly absolute ignorance +or determined evasion of the fact that there are artists who are now +working in the theatre. In making this statement I can speak personally +of performances I have seen at the Metropolitan Opera House, New +York; the Auditorium, Chicago; Covent Garden Theatre, London; La +Scala, Milan; the Opéra, Paris; and the Prinz-Regenten-Theatre in +Munich. Are there theatres where the Wagner dramas are better given? +I do not think so. Compare the scenery of _Götterdämmerung_ at the +Metropolitan Opera House with that of _Boris Godunow_, and you will +see how little care is being taken of Wagner’s ideals. In the one case +the flimsiest sort of badly painted and badly lighted canvas, mingled +indiscriminately with plastic objects, boughs, branches, etc., placed +next to painted boughs and branches, an effect calculated to throw the +falsity of the whole scene into relief; in the other case, an example +of a scene-painter’s art wrought to give the highest effect to the +drama it decorates. Take the decoration of the hall of the Gibichs +in which long scenes are enacted in both the first and last acts +of _Götterdämmerung_. The Gibichs are a savage, warlike, sinister, +primitive race. Now it is not necessary that the setting in itself be +strong, but it must suggest strength to the spectator. There is no +need to bring stone blocks or wood blocks on the stage; the artist +may work in black velvet if he wishes (it was of this material that +Professor Roller contrived a dungeon cell in _Fidelio_ which seemed to +be built of stone ten feet thick). It will be admitted, I think, by any +one who has seen the setting in question that it is wholly inadequate +to express the meaning of the drama. The scenes could be sung with a +certain effect in a Christian Science temple, but no one will deny, +I should say, that the effect of the music may be greatly heightened +by proper attention to the stage decoration and the movement of +the characters in relation to the lighting and decoration. (I have +used the Metropolitan Opera House, in this instance, as a convenient +illustration; but the scenery there is no worse, on the whole, than it +is in many of the other theatres named.) + +The secret at the bottom of the whole matter is that the directors of +the singing theatres wish to save themselves trouble. They will spend +neither money nor energy in righting this wrong. It is easier to trust +to tradition on the one hand and expediency on the other than it would +be to engage an expert (one not concerned with what had been done, +but one concerned with what to do) to produce the works. _Carmen_ was +losing its popularity in this country when Emma Calvé, who had broken +all the rules made for the part by Galli-Marié, enchanted opera-goers +with her fantastic conception of the gipsy girl. Bizet’s work had +dropped out of the répertoire again when Mme. Bressler-Gianoli arrived +and carried it triumphantly through nearly a score of performances +during the first season of Oscar Hammerstein’s Manhattan Opera House. +Geraldine Farrar and Toscanini resuscitated the Spanish jade a third +time. An Olive Fremstad or a Lilli Lehmann or a Milka Ternina can +perform a like office for _Götterdämmerung_ or _Tristan und Isolde_; +but it is to a new producer, an Adolphe Appia or a Gordon Craig, that +the theatre director must look for the final salvation of Wagner, +through the complete realization of his own ideals. It must be obvious +to any one that the more completely the meaning of his plays is exposed +by the decoration, the lighting and the action, the greater the effect. + +Adolphe Appia wrote a book called “Die Musik und die Inscenierung,” +which was published in German in 1899. (An earlier work, “La +mise-en-scène du drame Wagnerien,” appeared in Paris in 1893.) Since +then his career has been strangely obscure for one whose effect on +artists working at stage decoration has been greater than that of any +other single man. In the second edition of his book, “On the Art of the +Theatre,” Gordon Craig, in a footnote, speaks thus of Appia: “Appia, +_the foremost stage decorator of Europe_ (the italics are mine) is not +dead. I was told that he was no more with us, so, in the first edition +of this book, I included him among the shades. I first saw three +examples of his work in 1908, and I wrote a friend asking, ‘Where is +Appia and how can we meet?’ My friend replied, ‘Poor Appia died some +years ago.’ This winter (1912) I saw some of Appia’s designs in a +portfolio belonging to Prince Wolkonsky. They were divine; and I was +told that the designer was still living.” + +Loomis Taylor, who, during the season of 1914-15, staged the Wagner +operas at the Metropolitan Opera House (and it was not his fault that +the staging was not improved; there is no stage director now working +who has more belief in and knowledge of the artists of the theatre than +Loomis Taylor) has written me, in response to a query, the following +regarding Appia: “Adolphe Appia, I think, is a French-Swiss; he is a +young man. The title of the book which made him famous, in its German +translation, is ‘Die Musik und die Inscenierung.’ It was translated +from the French by Princess Cantacuzène.... Five years ago I was told +by Mrs. Houston Stewart Chamberlain that Appia was slowly but surely +starving to death in some picturesque surroundings in Switzerland. I +then tried to get various people in Germany interested in him, also +proposing him to Hagemann as scenic artist for Mannheim. Two years +later, before his starving process had reached its conclusion, I heard +of him as collaborator with Jaques-Dalcroze at his temple of rhythm +on the banks of the Elbe, outside of Dresden, where, I think, up to +the outbreak of the war, Appia was doing very good work, but what has +become of him since I do not know. + +“His book is very valuable; his suggestions go beyond the possibilities +of the average Hof theatre, while in Bayreuth they have a similar +effect to a drop of water upon a stone, sun-burned by the rays of +Cosima’s traditions. By being one of the first--if not _the_ first--to +put in writing the inconsistency of using painted perspective scenery +and painted shadows with human beings on the stage, Appia became the +fighter for plastic scenery. His sketch of the _Walküren_ rock is the +most beautiful scenic conception of Act III, _Die Walküre_, I know of +or could imagine. To my knowledge no theatre has ever produced anything +in conformity with Appia’s sketches.” + +In a letter to me Hiram Kelly Moderwell, whose book, “The Theatre of +To-day,” is the best exposition yet published of the aims and results +of the artists who are working in the theatre, writes as follows in +regard to Appia: “Appia is now with Dalcroze at Hellerau and I believe +has designed and perhaps produced all the things that have been done +there in the last year or two. Previous to that I am almost certain he +had done no actual stage work. Nobody else would give him free rein. +But, as you know, he thought everything out carefully as though he +were doing the actual practical stage work.... By this time he has hit +his ‘third manner.’ It’s all cubes and parallelograms. It sounds like +hell on paper but Maurice Browne told me it is very fine stuff. Browne +says it is as much greater than Craig as Craig is greater than anybody +else. All the recent Hellerau plays are in this third manner. They are +lighted by Salzmann, indirect and diffused lighting, but not in the +Fortuny style. I imagine the Hellerau stuff is rather too precious to +go on the ordinary stage.” + +Mr. Moderwell’s description of Appia’s book is so completely +illuminating that I feel I cannot do better than to quote the entire +passage from “The Theatre of To-day”: “Before his (Gordon Craig’s) +influence was felt, however, Adolphe Appia, probably the most powerful +theorist of the new movement, had written his remarkable book, ‘Die +Musik und die Inscenierung.’ In this, as an artist, he attempted to +deduce from the content of the Wagner music dramas the proper stage +settings for them. His conclusions anticipated much of the best work of +recent years and his theories have been put into practice in more or +less modified form on a great many stages--not so much (if at all) for +the Wagner dramas themselves, which are under a rigid tradition (the +‘what the Master wished’ myth), but for operas and the more lyric plays +where the producer has artistic ability and a free hand in applying it. + +“Appia started with the principle that the setting should make the +actor the all-important fact on the stage. He saw the realistic +impossibility of the realistic setting, and destructively analyzed the +current modes of lighting and perspective effects. But, unlike the +members of the more conventional modern school, he insisted that the +stage is a three-dimension space and must be handled so as to make its +depth living. He felt a contradiction between the living actor and the +dead setting. He wished to bind them into one whole--the drama. How was +this to be done? + +“Appia’s answer to this question is his chief claim to +greatness--genius almost. His answer was--‘By means of the lighting.’ +He saw the deadliness of the contemporary methods of lighting, and +previsaged with a sort of inspiration the possibilities of new methods +which have since become common. This was at a time when he had at +his disposal none of the modern lighting systems. His foreseeing of +modern practice by means of rigid Teutonic logic in the service of the +artist’s intuition makes him one of the two or three foremost theorists +of the modern movement. + +“The lighting, for Appia, is the spiritual core, the soul of the +drama. The whole action should be contained in it, somewhat as we feel +the physical body of a friend to be contained in his personality. +Appia’s second great principle is closely connected with this. While +the setting is obviously inanimate, the actor must in every way be +emphasized and made living. And this can be accomplished, he says, +only by a wise use of lighting, since it is the lights and shadows +on a human body which reveal to our eyes the fact that the body is +‘plastic’--that is, a flexible body of three dimensions. Appia would +make the setting suggest only the atmosphere, not the reality of the +thing it stands for, and would soften and beautify it with the lights. +The actor he would throw constantly into prominence while keeping him +always a part of the scene. All the elements and all the action of the +drama he would bind together by the lights and shadows. + +“With the most minute care each detail of lighting, each position +of each character, in Appia’s productions is studied out so that +the dramatic meaning shall always be evident. Hence any setting of +his contains vastly more thought than is visible at a glance. It is +designed to serve for every exigency of the scene--so that a character +here shall be in full light at a certain point, while talking directly +to a character who must be quite in the dark, or that the light shall +just touch the fringe of one character’s robe as she dies, or that the +action shall all take place unimpeded, and so on. At the same time, +needless to say, Appia’s stage pictures are of the highest artistic +beauty.”[1] + +In Appia’s design for the third act of _Die Walküre_, so +enthusiastically praised by Loomis Taylor, the rock of the valkyries +juts like a huge promontory of black across the front of the scene, +silhouetted against a clouded sky. So all the figures of the valkyries +stand high on the rock and are entirely silhouetted, while Sieglinde +below in front of the rock in the blackness, is hidden from the rage +of the approaching Wotan. Any one who has seen this scene as it is +ordinarily staged, without any reference to beauty or reason, will +appreciate even this meagre description of an artist’s intention, +which has not yet been carried out in any theatre with which I have +acquaintance. + +Appia’s design for the first scene of _Parsifal_ discloses a group +of boughless, straight-stemmed pines, towering to heaven like the +cathedral group at Vallombrosa. Overhead the dense foliage hides the +forest paths from the sun. Light comes in through the centre at the +back, where there is a vista of plains across to the mountains, on +which one may imagine the castle of the Grail. He places a dynamic and +dramatic value on light which it is highly important to understand in +estimating his work. For example, his lighting of the second act of +_Tristan und Isolde_ culminates in a _pitch-dark_ stage during the +singing of the love-duet. This artist has designed the scenery for all +the _Ring_ and has indicated throughout what the lighting and action +shall be. + +I do not know that Gordon Craig has turned his attention to any +particular Wagner drama, although he has made suggestions for several +of them, but he could, if he would, devise a mode of stage decoration +which would make the plays and their action as appealing in their +beauty as the music and the singing often now are. In his book, “On the +Art of the Theatre,” he has been explicit in his descriptions of his +designs for _Macbeth_, and the rugged strength and symbolism of his +settings and ideas for that tragedy proclaim perhaps his best right to +be a leader in the reformation of the Wagner dramas, although, even +then, it must be confessed that Craig is derived in many instances from +Appia, whom Craig himself hails as the foremost stage decorator of +Europe to-day. + +Read Gordon Craig on _Macbeth_ and you will get an idea of how an +artist would go to work on _Tristan und Isolde_ or _Götterdämmerung_. +“I see two things, I see a lofty and steep rock, and I see the moist +cloud which envelops the head of this rock. That is to say, a place +for fierce and warlike men to inhabit, a place for phantoms to nest +in. Ultimately this moisture will destroy the rock; ultimately these +spirits will destroy the men. Now then, you are quick in your question +as to what actually to create for the eye. I answer as swiftly--place +there a rock! Let it mount high. Swiftly I tell you, convey the idea of +a mist which hangs at the head of this rock. Now, have I departed at +all for one-eighth of an inch from the vision which I saw in the mind’s +eye? + +“But you ask me what form this rock shall take and what colour? What +are the lines which are the lofty lines, and which are to be seen in +any lofty cliff? Go to them, glance but a moment at them; now quickly +set them down on your paper; _the lines and their direction_, never +mind the cliff. Do not be afraid to let them go high; they cannot go +high enough; and remember that on a sheet of paper which is but two +inches square you can make a line which seems to tower miles in the +air, and you can do the same on your stage, for it is all a matter of +proportion and has nothing to do with actuality. + +“You ask about the colours? What are the colours which Shakespeare has +indicated for us? Do not first look at Nature, but look at the play +of the poet. Two, one for the rock, the man; one for the mist, the +spirit. Now, quickly, take and accept this statement from me. Touch +not a single other colour, but only these two colours through your +whole progress of designing your scenes and your costumes, yet forget +not that each colour contains many variations. If you are timid for a +moment and mistrust yourself or what I tell, when the scene is finished +you will not see with your eye the effect you have seen with your +mind’s eye when looking at the picture which Shakespeare has indicated.” + +The producers of the Wagner music dramas do not seem to have heard +of Adolphe Appia. Gordon Craig is a myth to them. Reinhardt does not +exist. Have they ever seen the name of Stanislawsky? Do they know +where his theatre is? Would they consider it sensible to spend three +years in mounting _Hamlet_? Is the name of Fokine known to them? of +Bakst? N. Roerich, Nathalie Gontcharova, Alexandre Benois, Theodore +Federowsky?... One could go on naming the artists of the theatre. +(Recently there have been evidences of an art movement in the theatre +in America. Joseph Urban, first in Boston with the Boston Opera +Company, and later in New York with various theatrical enterprises, +may be mentioned as an important figure in this movement. His settings +for _Monna Vanna_ were particularly beautiful and he really seems to +have revolutionized the staging of _revues_ and similar light musical +pieces. Robert Jones has done some very good work. I think he was +responsible for the imaginative staging [in Gordon Craig’s manner, to +be sure] of the inner scenes in the Shakespeare mask, _Caliban_. But I +would give the Washington Square Players credit for the most successful +experiments which have been made in New York. In every instance they +have attempted to suit the staging to the mood of the drama, and have +usually succeeded admirably, at slight expense. They have developed +a good deal of previously untried talent in this direction. Lee +Simonson, in particular, has achieved distinctive results. I have +seldom seen better work of its kind on the stage than his settings +for _The Magical City_, _Pierre Patelin_, and _The Seagull_. At the +Metropolitan Opera House no account seems to be taken of this art +movement, although during the season of 1915-16 in _The Taming of the +Shrew_ an attempt was made to emulate the very worst that has been done +in modern Germany.) + +For several years the Russian Ballet, under the direction of Serge +de Diaghilew, has been presenting operas and ballets in the European +capitals, notably in London and Paris for long seasons each summer +(the Ballet has been seen in America since this article was written). +A number of artists and a number of stage directors have been working +together in staging these works, which, as a whole, may be conceded +to be the most completely satisfying productions which have been made +on the stage during the progress of this new movement in the theatre. +One or two of the German productions, or Gordon Craig’s _Hamlet_ +in Stanislawsky’s theatre, may have surpassed them in the sterner +qualities of beauty, the serious truth of their art, but none has +surpassed them in brilliancy, in barbaric splendour, or in their almost +complete solution of the problems of mingling people with painted +scenery. The Russians have solved these problems by a skilful (and +passionately liberal) use of colour and light. The painted surfaces +are mostly flat, to be sure, and crudely painted, but the tones of +the canvas are so divinely contrived to mingle with the tones of the +costumes that the effect of an animated picture is arrived at with +seemingly very little pother. This method of staging is not, in most +instances, it must be admitted, adapted to the requirements of the +Wagner dramas. Bakst, I imagine, would find it difficult to cramp +his talents in the field of Wagnerism, though he should turn out a +very pretty edition of _Das Rheingold_. Roerich, on the other hand, +who designed the scenery and costumes for _Prince Igor_ as it was +presented in Paris and London in the summer of 1914, would find no +difficulty in staging _Götterdämmerung_. The problem is the same: to +convey an impression of barbarism and strength. One scene I remember in +Borodine’s opera in which an open window, exposing only a clear stretch +of sky--the rectangular opening occupied half of the wall at the back +of the room--was made to act the drama. A few red lights skilfully +played on the curtain representing the sky made it seem as if in truth +a city were burning and I thought how a similar simple contrivance +might make a more imaginative final scene for _Götterdämmerung_. + +It is, however, in their handling of mechanical problems that the +Russians could assist the new producer of the Wagner dramas to his +greatest advantage. In Rimsky-Korsakow’s opera, _The Golden Cock_, +for instance, the bird of the title has several appearances to make. +Now there was no attempt made, in the Russians’ stage version of this +work, to have this bird jiggle along a supposedly invisible wire, in +reality quite visible, flapping his artificial wings and wiggling his +insecure feet, as in the usual productions of _Siegfried_. Instead the +bird was built solid like a bronze cock for a drawing-room table; he +did not flap his wings; his feet were motionless; when the action of +the drama demanded his presence he was let down on a wire; there was +no pretence of a lack of machinery. The effect, however, was vastly +more imaginative and diverting than that in _Siegfried_, because it was +more simple. In like manner King Dodon, in the same opera, mounted a +wooden horse on wheels to go to the wars, and the animals he captured +were also made of wood, studded with brilliant beads. In Richard +Strauss’s ballet, _The Legend of Joseph_, the figure of the guardian +angel was not let down on a wire from the flies as he might have been +in a Drury Lane pantomime; the naïve nature of the work was preserved +by his nonchalant entrance across the _loggia_ and down a flight of +steps, exactly the entrance of all the human characters of the ballet. +I do not mean to suggest that these particular expedients would fit +into the Wagner dramas so well as they do into works of a widely +different nature. They should, however, indicate to stage directors the +possibility of finding a method to suit the case in each instance. And +I do assert, without hope or fear of contradiction, that Brünnhilde +with a wooden horse would challenge less laughter than she does with +the sorry nags which are put at her disposal and which Siegfried later +takes down the river with him. It is only down the river that one +can sell such horses. As for the bird, there are bird trainers whose +business it is to teach pigeons to fly from pillar to post in the music +halls; their services might be contracted for to make that passage +in _Siegfried_ a little less distracting. The difficulties connected +with this particular mechanical episode (and a hundred others) might +be avoided by a different lighting of the scene. If the tree-tops of +the forest were submerged in the deepest shadows, as well they might +be, the flight of the bird on a wire might be accomplished with some +sort of illusion. But why should one see the bird at all? One hears it +constantly as it warbles advice to the hero. + +The new Wagner producer must possess many qualities if he wishes to +place these works on a plane where they may continue to challenge the +admiration of the world. Wagner himself was more concerned with his +ideals than he was with their practical solution. Besides, it must be +admitted that taste in stage art and improvements in stage mechanism +have made great strides in the last decade. The plaster wall, for +instance, which has replaced in many foreign theatres the flapping, +swaying, wrinkled, painted canvas sky cyclorama (still in use at the +Metropolitan Opera House; a vast sum was paid for it a few years ago) +is a new invention and one which, when appropriately lighted, perfectly +counterfeits the appearance of the sky in its different moods. (So +far as I know the only theatre in New York with this apparatus is +the Neighborhood Playhouse on Grand Street.) In Houston Stewart +Chamberlain’s “Richard Wagner,” published in 1897, I find the following: + +“Wagner foresaw that in the new drama the whole principle of the stage +scenery must undergo a complete alteration but did not particularize in +detail. The _Meister_ says that ‘music resolves the rigid immovable +groundwork of the scenery into a liquid, yielding, ethereal surface, +capable of receiving impressions’; but to prevent a painful conflict +between what is seen and what is heard, the stage picture, too, must +be relieved from the curse of rigidity which now rests upon it. The +only way of doing this is by managing the light in a manner which +its importance deserves, that its office may no longer be confined +to illuminating painted walls.... I am convinced that the next great +advance in the drama will be of this nature, in the art of the eye, +and not in music.” (The passage quoted further refers to Appia’s first +book, published in French. Chamberlain was a close friend of Appia and +“Die Musik und die Inscenierung” is dedicated to him.) + +It must also be understood that Wagner in some instances, when the +right medium of his expression was clear to him, made concessions to +what he considered the unintelligence of the public. Wotan’s waving of +the sword is a case in point. The _motiv_ without the object he did +not think would carry out the effect he intended to convey, although +the absurdity of Wotan’s founding his new humanity on the power of the +degenerate giants must have been apparent to him. Sometimes the Master +changed his mind. Paris would have none of _Tannhäuser_ without a +ballet and so Wagner rewrote the first act and now the Paris version +of the opera is the accepted one. In any case it must be apparent that +what Wagner wanted was a fusion of the arts, and a completely artistic +one. So that if any one can think of a better way of presenting his +dramas than one based on the very halting staging which he himself +devised (with the limited means at his command) as perhaps the best +possible to exploit his ideals, that person should be hailed as +Wagner’s friend. It must be seen, at any current presentation of his +dramas, that his way, or Cosima’s, is not the best way. The single +performances which have made the deepest impression on the public have +deviated the farthest from tradition. Olive Fremstad’s Isolde was far +from traditional. Her very costume of deep green was a flaunt in the +face of Wagner’s conventionally white robed heroine. In the first +act, after taking the love potion, she did not indulge in any of the +swimming movements usually employed by sopranos to pass the time away +until the occasion came to sing again. She stood as a woman dazed, +passing her hands futilely before her eyes, and it was to be noted +that in some instances her action had its supplement in the action of +the tenor who was singing with her, although, in other instances, he +would continue to swim in the most highly approved Bayreuth fashion. +But Olive Fremstad, artist that she was, could not completely divorce +herself from tradition; in some cases she held to it against her +judgment. The stage directions for the second act of _Parsifal_, for +example, require Kundry to lie on her couch, tempting the hero, for +a very long time. Great as Fremstad’s Kundry was, it might have been +improved if she had allowed herself to move more freely along the +lines that her artistic conscience dictated. Her Elsa was a beautiful +example of the moulding of the traditional playing of a rôle into a +picturesque, imaginative figure, a feat similar to that which Mary +Garden accomplished in her delineation of Marguerite in _Faust_. Mme. +Fremstad always sang Brünnhilde in _Götterdämmerung_ throughout with +the fire of genius. This was surely some wild creature, a figure of +Greek tragedy, a Norse Elektra. The superb effect she wrought, at her +first performance in the rôle, with the scene of the spear, was never +tarnished in subsequent performances. The thrill was always there. + +In face of acting and singing like that one can afford to ignore +Wagner’s theory about the wedding of the arts. A Fremstad or a Lehmann +can carry a Wagner drama to a triumphant conclusion with few, if +any, accessories, but great singing artists are rare; nor does a +performance of this kind meet the requirements of the Wagner ideal, in +which the picture, the word, and the tone shall all be a part of the +drama (_Wort-Tondrama_). Wagner invented a new form of stage art but +only in a small measure did he succeed in perfecting a method for its +successful presentation. The artist-producer must arise to repair this +deficiency, to become the dominating force in future performances, to +see that the scenes are painted in accordance with the principles of +beauty and dramatic fitness, to see that they are lighted to express +the secrets of the drama, as Appia says they should be, to see that +the action is sympathetic with the decoration, and that the decoration +never encumbers the action, that the lighting assists both. There never +has been a production of the _Ring_ which has in any sense realized its +true possibilities, the ideal of Wagner. + + +_June 24, 1915._ + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] For a further discussion of Appia’s work and its probable influence +on Gordon Craig, see an article “Adolphe Appia and Gordon Craig” in my +book “Music After the Great War.” + + + + + The Bridge Burners + + “_Zieh’hin! ich kann dich nicht halten!_” + + Der Wanderer. + + + + +The Bridge Burners + + +I + +It is from the enemy that one learns. Richelieu and other great men +have found it folly to listen to the advice of friends when rancour, +hatred, and jealousy inspired much more helpful suggestions. And it +occurred to me recently that the friends of modern music were doing +nothing by way of describing it. They are content to like it. I must +confess that I have been one of these. I have heard first performances +of works by Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy on occasions when +the programme notes gave one cause for dread. At these times I have +often been pleasurably excited and I have never lacked for at least a +measured form of enjoyment except when I found those gods growing a bit +old. The English critics were right when they labelled _The Legend of +Joseph_ Handelian. The latest recital of Leo Ornstein’s which I heard +made me realize that even the extreme modern music evidently protrudes +no great perplexities into my ears. They accept it all, a good deal of +it with avidity, some with the real tribute of astonishment which goes +only to genius. + +On the whole, I think, I should have found it impossible to write +this article which, with a new light shining on my paper, is dancing +from under my darting typewriter keys, if I had not stumbled by +good luck into the camp of the enemy. For I find misunderstanding, +lack of sympathy, and enmity towards the new music to a certain +degree inspirational. These qualities, projected, have crystallized +impressions in my mind, which might, under other circumstances, have +remained vague and, in a sense, I think I may make bold to say, they +have made it possible for me to synthesize to a greater degree than has +hitherto been attempted, the various stimuli and progressive gestures +of modern music. I can more clearly say now _why_ I like it. (If I were +to tell others how to like it I should be forced to resort to a single +sentence: “Open your ears”.) + +A good deal of this new insight has come to me through assiduous +perusal of Mr. Richard Aldrich’s comment on musical doings in the +columns of the “New York Times.” Mr. Aldrich, like many another, +has been bewildered and annoyed by a good deal of the modern music +played (Heaven knows that there is little enough modern music played +in New York. Up to date [April 16, 1916] there has been nothing of +Arnold Schoenberg performed this season later than his _Pelléas +und Mélisande_ and his _Kammersymphonie_; of Strawinsky--aside +from the three slight pieces for string quartet--nothing later than +_Petrouchka_. Such new works as John Alden Carpenter’s _Adventures in +a Perambulator_ and Enrique Granados’s _Goyescas_--as an opera--do not +seriously overtax the critical ear) but he has done more than some +others by way of expressing the causes of this bewilderment and this +annoyance. Some critics neglect the subject altogether but Mr. Aldrich +at least attempts to be explanatory. My first excerpt from his writings +is clipped from an article in the “New York Times” of December 5, 1915, +devoted to the string quartet music of Strawinsky, performed by the +Flonzaleys at Æolian Hall in New York on the evening of November 30: + +“So far as this particular type of ‘futurist’ music is concerned it +seems to be conditioned on an accompaniment of something else to +explain it from beginning to end.” + +Is this a reproach? The context would seem to indicate that it is. +If so it seems a late date in which to hurl anathema at programme +music. One would have fancied that that battle had already been fought +and won by Ernest Newman, Frederick Niecks, and Lawrence Gilman, to +name a few of the gladiators for the cause. Why Mr. Aldrich, having +swallowed whole, so to speak, the tendency of music during a century +of its development, should suddenly balk at music which requires +explanation I cannot imagine. However, this would seem to be the point +he makes in face of the fact that at least two-thirds of a symphony +society’s programme is made up of programme music. Berlioz said in the +preface to his _Symphonie Fantastique_, “The plan of an instrumental +drama, being without words, requires to be explained beforehand. The +programme (which is indispensable to the perfect comprehension of the +dramatic plan of the work) ought therefor to be considered in the +light of the spoken text of an opera, serving to ... indicate the +character and expression.” Ernest Newman built up an elaborate theory +on these two sentences, a theory fully expounded in an article called +“Programme Music” published in “Music Studies” (1905), and touched +on elsewhere in his work (at some length, of course, in his “Richard +Strauss.”) He brings out the facts. Representation of natural sounds, +emotions, and even objects--or attempts at it--in early music were not +rare. He cites the justly famous _Bible Sonatas_ of Kuhnau, Rameau’s +_Sighs_ and _Tender Plants_, Dittersdorf’s twelve programme symphonies +illustrating Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_, and John Sebastian Bach’s +_Capriccio on the Departure of my Dearly Beloved Brother_. Beethoven +wrote a _Pastoral Symphony_ in which he attempted to imitate the sound +of a brook and the call of a cuckoo. There is also a storm in this +symphony. The fact that Beethoven denied any intention of portraying +anything but “pure emotion” in this symphony is evasion and humbug as +Newman very clearly points out. From what do these emotions arise? +The answer is, From the contemplation of country scenes. The auditor +without a programme will not find the symphony so enjoyable as the +one who _knows_ what awakened the emotions in the composer. Beethoven +wrote a “battle” symphony too, a particularly bad one, I believe (I +have never seen it announced for performance). It is true, however, +that most of the composers of the “great” period were content to number +their symphonies and to call their piano pieces impromptus, sonatas, +valses, and nocturnes. Nous avons changé tout cela. Schumann was one +of the first of the composers of the nineteenth century to write music +with titles. In the _Carneval_, for example, each piece is explained +by its title. And explanations, or shadows of explanations (Cathedral, +Rhenish, Spring, etc.), hover about the four symphonies. Berlioz, +of course, carried the principle of programme music to a degree that +was considered absurd in his own time. He wrote symphonies like the +_Romeo and Juliet_ and the _Fantastique_ which had to be “explained +from beginning to end.” Liszt invented the symphonic poem and composed +pieces which are only to be listened to after one has read the poem or +seen the picture which they describe. Richard Strauss rounded out the +form and put the most elaborate naturalistic details into such works as +_Don Quixote_ and _Till Eulenspiegel_. Understanding of this music and +complete enjoyment of it rely in a large measure on the “explanation.” +The _Symphonia Domestica_ and _Heldenleben_ are extreme examples of +this sort of thing. What does Wagner’s whole system depend on but +“explanation”? How does one know that a certain sequence of notes +represents a sword? Because the composer tells us so. How does one +discover that another sequence of notes represents Alberich’s curse? +Through the same channel. Bernard Shaw says in _The Perfect Wagnerite_: +“To be able to follow the music of _The Ring_, all that is necessary +is to become familiar enough with the brief musical phrases out of +which it is built to recognize them and attach a certain definite +significance to them, exactly as any ordinary Englishman recognizes +and attaches a definite significance to the opening bars of _God Save +the Queen_.” Modern music is full of this sort of thing. It leans more +and more heavily on titles, on mimed drama, on “explanation.” Think of +almost all the music of Debussy, for example, _La Mer_, _l’Après-midi +d’un Faune_, _Iberia_, nearly all the piano music; Rimsky-Korsakow’s +_Scheherazade_, _Antar_, and _Sadko_ (the symphonic suite, not the +opera); Vincent d’Indy’s _Istar_; Borodine’s _Thamar_; Dukas’s +_l’Apprenti Sorcier_; Franck’s _Le Chasseur Maudit_ and _Les Eolides_; +Saint-Saëns’s _Phaëton_, _La Jeunesse d’Hercule_, and _Le Rouet +d’Omphale_; Busoni’s music for _Turandot_: the list is endless and it +is futile to continue it. + +But, Mr. Aldrich would object, in most of these instances the music +stands by itself and it is possible to enjoy it without reference to +the titles. I contend that this is just as true of Strawinsky’s three +pieces for string quartet (of course one never will be sure because +Daniel Gregory Mason explained these pieces before they were played). +However Mr. Newman has already exploded a good many bombs about this +particular point and he has shown the fallacy of the theory. Mr. +Newman concedes that a work such as Tschaikowsky’s overture _Romeo +and Juliet_, would undoubtedly “give intense pleasure to any one who +listened to it as a piece of music, pure and simple. But I deny,” +he continues, “that this hearer would receive as much pleasure from +the work as I do. He might think the passage for muted strings, for +example, extremely beautiful, but he would not get from it such +delight as I, who not only feel all the _musical_ loveliness of the +melody and the harmonies and the tone colour, but see the lovers on +the balcony and breathe the very atmosphere of Shakespeare’s scene. +I am richer than my fellow by two or three emotions of this kind. My +nature is stirred on two or three sides instead of only one. I would +go further and say that not only does the auditor I have supposed +get less pleasure from the work than I, but he really does not hear +Tschaikowsky’s work at all. If the musician writes music to a play +and invents phrases to symbolize the characters and to picture the +events of the play, we are simply not listening to _his_ work at all +if we listen to it in ignorance of his poetical scheme. We may hear +the music but it is not the music he meant us to hear.” And Mr. Newman +goes on to berate Strauss for not providing programmes for some of his +tone-poems (programmes, however, which have always been provided by +somebody in authority at the eleventh hour). Niecks thinks that nearly +all music has an implied programme: “My opinion is that whenever the +composer ceases to write purely formal music he passes from the domain +of absolute music into that of programme music.” (“Programme Music in +the Last Four Centuries.”) But Niecks does not hold that explanation is +always necessary, even if there is a programme. + +Under the circumstances it seems a bit thick to jump on Strawinsky for +writing music which has to be explained. Such pieces as _Fireworks_ +or the _Scherzo Fantastique_ need no more extended explanation than +the titles give them. His three pieces for string quartet were listed +without programme at the Flonzaley concert and might have been played +that way, I think, without causing the heavens to fall. But Strawinsky +had told some one that their general title was _Grotesques_ and that +he had composed each of them with a programme in mind, which was +divulged. When the music was played, in the circumstances, what he +was driving at was as plain as A. B. C. There was no further demand +made on the auditor than that he prepare himself, as Schumann asked +auditors to prepare themselves to listen to the _Carneval_, by thinking +of the titles. In Strawinsky’s opera, _The Nightingale_, the text +of the opera serves as the programme. There are no representative +themes; there is no “working-out.” You are not required to remember +_leit-motive_ in order to familiarize your emotions with the proper +capers to cut at particular moments when these _motive_ are repeated. +You are asked simply to follow the course of the lyric drama with open +ears, open mind, and open heart. Albert Gleizes, the post-impressionist +painter, once told me that he considered the title an essential part +of a picture. “It is a _point de départ_,” he said. “In painting a +picture I always have some idea or object in mind in the beginning. In +my completed picture I may have wandered far away from this. Now the +title gives the spectator the advantage of starting where I started.” +A title to a musical composition gives an auditor a similar advantage. +No doubt Strawinsky’s _Fireworks_ would make a nice blaze without the +name but the title gives us a picture to begin with, just as Wagner +gives us scenery and text and action (to say nothing of a handbook of +representative themes) to explain the music of _Die Walküre_.... + +An important point has been overlooked by those who have watched +painting and music develop during the past century: while painting +has become less and less an attempt to represent nature, music has +more and more attempted concrete representation. There has seemed, at +times, to be an interchange in progress in the values of the arts. +(“He [Cézanne] is the first of the great painters to treat colour +deliberately as music; he tests all its harmonic resources,” Romain +Rolland.) Observers of matters æsthetic have frequently told us that +both of these arts were breaking with their old principles and going +on to something new but, it would seem, they have failed to grasp the +significance of the change. Music, as it drops its classic outline +and form, the _cliché_ of the studio and the academy, becomes more +and more like nature, because natural sounds are not co-ordinated +into symphonies with working-out sections and codas, first and second +subjects, etc., while in painting, in some of its later manifestations, +the resemblance to things seen has entirely disappeared. This fact, at +least one phase of it, was realized in concrete form by the futurists +in Italy who asserted that polyphony, fugue, etc., were contraptions of +a bygone age when the stage-coach was in vogue. Machinery has changed +the world. We are living in a dynasty of dynamics. A certain number +of futurists even give concerts of noise machines in which a definite +attempt is made to imitate the sounds of automobiles, aeroplanes, etc. +At a concert given at the Dal Verme in Milan, for example, the pieces +were called _The Awakening of a Great City_, _A Dinner on the Kursaal +Terrace_ (doubtless with an imitation of the guests eating soup), and +_A Meet of Automobiles and Aeroplanes_. + +Picasso and Picabia have made us acquainted with a form of art which +in its vague realization of representative values becomes almost as +abstract an art as music was in the time of Beethoven, while such +musicians as Strauss, Debussy, and Strawinsky, have gradually widened +the boundaries which have confined music, and have made it at times +something very concrete. Debussy’s _La Mer_, for example, is a much +more definite picture (in leaning over the rail of the gallery of the +Salle Gaveau in Paris during a performance of this piece I actually +became sea-sick!) than Marcel Duchamp’s painting of the _Nu Descendant +l’Escalier_. So Strawinsky’s three pieces for string quartet represent +certain things in nature (the first a group of peasants playing strange +instruments on the steppes; the second sounds in a Cathedral heard by +a drowsy worshipper, the responses of the priest, chanted out of key, +the shrill antiphonal choruses; and the third a juggling Pierrot with +a soul-pain) much more definitely than Picasso’s latest _Nature Morte +dans un Jardin_. + +“Now the law which has dominated painting for more than a century is +a more and more comprehensive assimilation of musical idiom. Even +Delacroix spoke of ‘the mysterious effects of line and colour which, +alas, only a few adepts feel--like interwoven themes in music ...’ +and Baudelaire, in another connection, wrote, ‘Harmony, melody, and +counterpoint are to be found in colour.’ Ingres also remarked to his +disciples, ‘If I could make you all musicians you would be better +painters.’ Renoir, who journeyed to Sicily to paint Wagner’s portrait +and to translate _Tannhäuser_, is a musical enthusiast and his work +is music. Maurice Denis tells us that his pals at Julian’s Academy, +those who were to found synthesism with him, never tired of discussing +Lamoureux’s concerts, where they were enthusiastic habitués. Gaugin +announced that ‘painting is a musical phase.’ He speaks continually of +the music of a picture; when he wants to analyze his work he divides +it into the literary element, to which he attaches less importance, +and the musical element which he schemes first. Cézanne, whom Gaugin +compared to César Franck, said, ‘not model, but modulate.’ Metzinger +invokes the right of cubist painters to express all emotions as music +does, and one of the æstheticians of the new school writes: ‘The goal +of painting is perhaps a music of nature, visual music to which +traditional painting would have somewhat the status that sacred or +dramatic music has compared to concert music.’ + +“This, then, is the revolution in the art of line and colour which has +become aware of its intrinsic power, independent of any subject. In +truth, even among the Venetians, as has been well said, the subject +was ‘only the background upon which the painter relied to develop his +harmonies,’ but the mentality of spectators clings to this background +as to the libretto of an opera. At present, an end to librettos: Pure +music: those who wish to comprehend it must first of all master its +idiom, for ‘Colour is learned as music is.’” (Romain Rolland: “The +Unbroken Chain,” Lee Simonson’s translation.) + +So far, in spite of the protestations of horror made by the +academicians, the pedants, and the Philistines, which would lead one +to suppose a state of complete chaos, there has not been a complete +abandonment of co-ordination, of selection, or of intention, in either +art. In fact, it seems to me, that the qualities of intention and +selection are more powerful adjuncts of the artist than they have +been for many generations. In painting colour and form are cunningly +contrived to give us an idea, if not a photograph, and in music +natural (as well as unnatural) sounds are still arranged, perhaps to a +more extreme extent than ever before. + + +II + +I wonder if all the suggestion music gives us is associative. Sometimes +I think so. Was it Berlioz who remarked that the slightest quickening +of _tempo_ would transform the celebrated air in _Orphée_ from “_J’ai +perdu mon Euridice_” to “_J’ai trouvé mon Euridice_”? Rossini found an +overture which he had formerly used for a tragedy quite suitable for +_Il Barbiere di Siviglia_, and the interchangeable values which Handel +gave to secular and sacred tunes are familiar to all music students. +Are minor keys really sad? Are major keys always suggestive of joy? We +know that this is not true although one will be more sure of a ready +response of tears from a Western audience by resorting to a minor key. +In our music wedding marches are usually in the major and funeral +marches usually in the minor modes. But almost all Eastern music is in +a minor key, love songs and even cradle songs. Recall, or play over on +your piano, the Smyrnan lullaby (made familiar by Mme. Sembrich) which +occurs in the collection of Grecian and oriental melodies edited by +L. A. Bourgault-Ducoudray.... Even the composers who do not call their +pieces by name and who scorn the use of a programme, depend for some of +their most powerful effects on emotion created by association ... and +a new composer, be he indefatigable enough, can rouse new associations +in us.... Why if three or four composers would meet together and decide +that the use of a certain group of notes stood for the town pump, in +time it would be quite easy for other composers to use this phrase in +that connection _with no explanation whatever_. + + +III + +“It is a mistake of much popular criticism,” says Walter Pater, in the +first two sentences of his essay on “The School of Giorgione,” “to +regard poetry, music, and painting--all the various products of art--as +but translations into different languages of one and the same fixed +quantity of imaginative thought, supplemented by certain technical +qualities of colour, in painting; of sound, in music; of rhythmical +words, in poetry. In this way, the sensuous element in art, and with +it almost everything in art that is essentially artistic, is made a +matter of indifference; and a clear apprehension of the opposite +principle--that the sensuous material of each art brings with it a +special phase or quality of beauty, untranslatable into the forms of +any other, an order of impressions distinct in kind--is the beginning +of all true æsthetic criticism.” + +Strawinsky, in a sense, is quite done with programme music; at least +he says that this is so. “La musique est trop bête pour exprimer autre +chose que la musique” is his pregnant phrase, which I cannot quote +often enough. And in an interview with Stanley Wise, which appeared +in the columns of the “New York Tribune” he further says, “Programme +music ... has been obviously discontinued as being distinctly an +uncouth form which already has had its day; but music, nevertheless, +still drags out its life in accordance with these false notions and +conceptions. Without absolutely defying the programme, musicians still +draw upon sources foreign to their art.... The true inwardness of +music being purely acoustic, the art so expresses itself without being +concerned with feelings alien to its nature.... Music in the theatre +is still held in bondage to other elements. Wagner, in particular, is +responsible for this servitude in which music labours to-day.” + +The greater part of Igor Strawinsky’s music, up to date, is written +to a programme, but these remarks of the composer should not be +incomprehensible on that account. Somewhat later than the performance +of the three pieces for string quartet, _The Firebird_ and _Petrouchka_ +were performed in New York and were hailed by the critics, _en masse_, +as most delightful works. But the music depends for its success, they +said, on the stage action to explain it. I fancy this is true of many +operas which were written for the stage. _Siegfried_, as a whole, would +be pretty tiresome in concert form and so would _La Fille du Regiment_. +And read what Henry Fothergill Chorley has to say about the works of +Gluck (“Modern German Music”): “The most experienced and imaginative of +readers will derive from the closest perusal of the scores of Gluck’s +operas, feeble and distant impressions of their power and beauty. +The delicious charm of Mozart’s melody--the expressive nobility of +Handel’s ideas--may in some measure be comprehended by the student at +the pianoforte and the eye may assure the reader how masterly is the +symmetry of the vocal score with one,--how rich and complete is the +management of the instrumental score, with the other master. But this +is in no respect the case with _Alceste_, the two _Iphigénies_ and +_Armide_--it may be added, with almost any opera written according to +the canons of French taste. That which appears thin, bald, severe, +when it is merely perused, is filled up, brightens, enchants, excites, +and satisfies, when it is heard with action,--to a degree only to be +believed upon experience. Out of the theatre, three-fourths of Gluck’s +individual merit is lost. He wrote for the stage.” That all this is +true any one who, like me, has taken the trouble to study the scores of +the Gluck operas, which are infrequently performed, may have discovered +for himself. I have never heard _Alceste_ and that lyric drama, as a +result, has never sprung to me from the printed page as do the notes of +_Orphée_, _Armide_, and _Iphigénie en Tauride_. I am convinced of the +depth of expression contained in its pages; I am certain of its noble +power, but only because I have had a similar experience with other +Gluck music dramas, with which I have later become acquainted in the +theatre. + +This theory in regard to _Petrouchka_ and _The Firebird_ may be easily +contradicted, however. One listener told me that she got the complete +picture of the Russian fair by closing her eyes; it was all in the +music. The action, as a matter of fact, she added, annoyed her. It is +quite certain that the music of either of these works is delightful +when played on the piano; an average roomful of people who like to +listen to music will be charmed with it. _The Sacrifice to the Spring_ +was hissed intolerantly when it was performed as a ballet in Paris +but, later (April 5, 1914), when Pierre Monteux gave an orchestral +performance of the work at a concert it was applauded as violently. + +Strawinsky has, it is true, worked away from _representation_ (in the +sense of copying nature or, like Wagner, relying on literary formulas +for his effects) in his music, but he has written very little that does +not depend on a programme, either expressed or implied. All songs of +course are “explained” by their lyrics. The _Scherzo Fantastique_ and +_Fireworks_ are programme music in the lighter sense, and naturally +the music of his ballets and his opera depends for its meaning on the +stage action. What Strawinsky means to do, I think--certainly what +he has done--is to avoid going outside his subject or requiring his +listener to do so. To understand the music of his opera you need never +have heard a real nightingale sing, for the bird does not sing at all +like a nightingale, a fact which was not understood by the critics +when the work was first produced, and in _The Sacrifice to the Spring_ +you will find no attempt made to ape natural sounds, although there +was ample opportunity for doing so.... Another modern worker in tone, +Leo Ornstein, in the accompaniment to his cradle song (it is the same +_wiegenlied_ set by Richard Strauss, by the way) tries to give his +hearers the mother’s overtones, her thoughts about the child’s future, +etc.; the music, instead of attempting to express the exact meaning of +the poem, expresses _more_ than the poem. + +And Mr. Ornstein once said to me, “What I try to do in composing +is to get underneath, to express the feeling underneath--not to be +photographic. I do not think it is art to reproduce a steam whistle but +it is art to give the feeling that the steam whistle gives us. That +can never be done by exact reproduction.... I should not like a steam +whistle introduced into the concert room” (I had shamelessly suggested +it) “... but great, smashing chords....” + +Yet Mr. Ornstein in his _Impressions of the Thames_ is as near +actual representation as Whistler or Monet ... certainly a musical +impressionist. + +Is anything true? I hope not. At dinner the other evening a lady +attempted to prove to me that there were standards by which beauty +could be judged and rules by which it could be constructed. She was +unsuccessful. + + +IV + +It has occurred to me that Mr. Aldrich meant that he wanted the +juxtaposition of notes explained from beginning to end. Inspiration +is not always conscious ... one feels in the end whether such a +collocation is inevitable or not ... I wonder if Beethoven could have +explained one of his last quartets or piano sonatas. I doubt it. Of +course, on the other hand, Wagner explained and explained and explained. + + +V + +I am afraid that this quality alone, the fact that the music needs +explanation, is not the rock on which Mr. Aldrich splits, so to speak. +He writes somewhere else in this same article: “All he asks of his +listeners is to forget all they know about string quartet music.” Now +this is really too much. That is exactly what Strawinsky does, and +why shouldn’t he? Has not every great composer done as much? To quote +Ernest Newman again (this time from his book “Richard Strauss”), “All +the music of the giants of the past expresses no more than a fragment +of what music can and some day will express. With each new generation +it must discover and reveal some new secret of the universe and of +man’s heart; and as the thing uttered varies, the way of uttering it +must vary also. There is only one rational definition of good ‘form’ +in music--that which expresses most succinctly and most perfectly the +state of soul in which the idea originated; and as moods and ideas +change, so must forms.” “The true creator strives, in reality, after +_perfection_ only,” writes Busoni, in “A New Æsthetic of Music,” “and +through bringing this into harmony with _his own_ individuality, a new +law arises without premeditation.” The very greatness of Beethoven is +due to the fact that he made a perfect wedding of form and idea. His +forms (in which he broke with tradition in several important points) +were evolved out of his ideas. Now the very writers who give Beethoven +the credit for having accomplished this successful revolution and who +write enthusiastically of Gluck’s “reform of the opera,” object to any +contemporary instances of this spirit (Maurice Ravel “corrects” with +great care, I am told, the exercises of his pupils. “He who breaks +rules must first know them,” he says. And I have no disposition to +quarrel with this sort of reverence although I think it is sometimes +carried too far. However the critic attempts to “correct” the finished +pupil’s work, from the work of the past--a sad and impossible task). +Why in the name of goodness should not Strawinsky, or any other modern +composer, for that matter, be allowed to make us forget everything +we know about string quartets, if he is able? Some of us would be +grateful for the sensation. Leo Ornstein in a recent article said, +“The very first step which the composer must be given the privilege of +insisting upon is that his listeners should approach his work with no +preconceived notions of any kind; they must learn to allow absolute +and full freedom to their imaginations as it is only under such +circumstances that any new work can be understood and appreciated at +first. All preconceived theories must be abolished, and the new work +approached through no formulas.” And in the same article Mr. Ornstein +relates how, after he had played his _Wild Men’s Dance_ to Leschetizky +that worthy pedagogue murmured, amazed, “How in the world did you +get all those notes on paper!” That, unfortunately, concludes Mr. +Ornstein, is the attitude of the average listener to modern music. A +similar instance is related in the case of Strawinsky. He played some +measures of his ballet, _The Firebird_, on the piano to his master, +Rimsky-Korsakow, until the composer of _Scheherazade_ interposed, “Stop +playing that horrid thing; otherwise I might begin to enjoy it.” And +even the usually open-minded James Huneker says in his essay on Arnold +Schoenberg (“Ivory, Apes, and Peacocks”), “If such music-making is ever +to become accepted, then I long for Death the Releaser. More shocking +still would be the suspicion that in time I might be persuaded to like +this music, to embrace, after abhorring it.” These phrases of Huneker’s +remind me of a personal incident. My father has subscribed for the +“Atlantic Monthly” since the first issue and one of the earliest +memories of my childhood is connected with the inevitable copy which +always lay on the library table. On one occasion, contemplating it, I +burst into tears; nor could I be comforted. My explanation, between +sobs, was, “Some day I’ll grow up and like a magazine without pictures! +I can’t bear to think of it!” Well, there is many a man who weeps +because some day he may grow up to like music without melody! Music +_has_ changed; of that there can be no doubt. Don’t go to a concert +and expect to hear what you might have heard fifty years ago; don’t +expect _anything_ and don’t hate yourself if you happen to like what +you hear. Mr. George Moore’s evidence on this point of receptiveness +is enlightening (Mr. George Moore who spoke to me once of the “vulgar +noises made by the Russian Ballet”): “In _Petrouchka_ the orchestra all +began playing in different keys and when it came out into one key I was +quite dazed. I don’t know whether it is music but I rather liked it!” + +Still another point is raised by Mr. Aldrich. I quote from the “New +York Times” of December 8, 1915; the reference is to the second string +quartet of David Stanley Smith, played by the Kneisel Quartet (the +italics are mine): “Mr. Smith does not hesitate at drastic dissonance +_when it results from the leading of his part writing_.” There at last +we have the real nigger in the woodpile. The relation between keys is +so remote, the tonalities are so inexplicable in a modern Strawinsky +or Schoenberg work that the brain, prepared with a list of scales, +refuses to take in the natural impression that the ear receives. +This sort of criticism reminds me of a line which is quoted from +some London journal by William Wallace in “The Threshold of Music,” +“The whole work is singularly lacking in contrapuntal interest and +depends solely for such effect as it achieves upon certain emotional +impressions of harmony and colour.” And, nearer home, I culled the +following from the “New York Sun” of December 12, 1915 (Mr. W. J. +Henderson’s column), “This is what is the matter with the futurists +or post-impressionists in music. They are tone colourists and that is +all.” (Amusingly enough Mr. Henderson begins his remarks by praising +Joseph Pennell for writing an article in which the post-impressionist +painters were given a drubbing; this article is treated with contumely +and scorn by the art critic of the “Sun” on the page opposite that on +which Mr. Henderson’s article appears.) In all these cases you find men +complaining because a composer has done exactly what he started out to +do. F. Balilla Pratella in one of his futurist manifestos discusses +this point (the translation is my own), “The fugue, a composition +based on counterpoint par excellence, is full of (such) artifices even +when it achieves its artistic balance in the works of the great German +Sebastian Bach. Soul, intellectuality, and instinct are here fused in a +given form, in a given manifestation of art, an art of its own times, +historical and strictly connected with the life, faith, and culture of +that particular period. Why then should we be compelled or asked to +live it over again at the distance of several centuries?” And later, +“We proclaim as an essential principle of our futurist revolution +that counterpoint and fugue, stupidly considered as one of the most +important branches of musical learning, are in our eyes only the ruins +of the old science of polyphony which extends from the Flemish school +to Bach. We replace them by harmonic polyphony, logical fusion of +counterpoint and harmony, which allows musicians to escape the needless +difficulty of dividing their efforts in two opposing cultures, one +dead and the other contemporary, and entirely irreconcilable, because +they are the fruits of two different sensibilities.” To quote Busoni; +again: “How important, indeed, are ‘Third,’ ‘Fifth,’ and ‘Octave’! +How strictly we divide ‘consonances’ from ‘dissonances’--_in a sphere +where no dissonances can possibly exist_!” When Bernard Shaw published +“The Perfect Wagnerite” he wrote for a public which still considered +Wagner a little in advance of the contemporary in music. What did he +say? “My second encouragement is addressed to modest citizens who may +suppose themselves to be disqualified from enjoying _The Ring_ by their +technical ignorance of music. They may dismiss all such misgivings +speedily and confidently. If the sound of music has any power to move +them they will find that Wagner exacts nothing further. There is +not a single bar of ‘classical music’ in _The Ring_--not a note in +it that has any other point than the single direct point of giving +musical expression to the drama. In classical music there are, as the +analytical programmes tell us, first subjects and second subjects, +free fantasias, recapitulations, and codas; there are fugues, with +counter-subjects, strettos, and pedal points; there are passacaglias on +ground basses, canons and hypodiapente, and other ingenuities, which +have, after all, stood or fallen by their prettiness as much as the +simplest folk-tune. Wagner is never driving at anything of this sort +any more than Shakespeare in his plays is driving at such ingenuities +of verse-making as sonnets, triolets, and the like. And this is why he +is so easy for the natural musician who has had no academic teaching. +The professors, when Wagner’s music is played to them, exclaim at +once, ‘What is this? Is it aria, or recitative? Is there no cabeletta +to it--not even a full close? Why was that discord not prepared; and +why does he not resolve it correctly? How dare he indulge in those +scandalous and illicit transitions into a key that has not one note in +common with the key he has just left? Listen to those false relations. +What does he want with six drums and eight horns when Mozart worked +miracles with two of each? The man is no musician.’ The layman neither +knows nor cares about any of these things. It is the adept musician +of the old school who has everything to unlearn; and I leave him, +unpitied, to his fate.” All Wagner asked his contemporaries to do, in +fact, was to forget all they knew about opera! + + +VI + +This piling up of Shaw on Huneker, these dips into Newman and Niecks, +are beginning to be formidable, but one never knows what turn of the +road may lead the traveller to his promised land and it is better to +draw the map clearly even if there be a confusion of choices. And so, +just here, I beg leave to make a tiny digression, to point out that +the new music is not so terrible as all this explanation may have +made it seem to be. Granville Bantock talks learnedly of “horizontal +counterpoint” but his music is perfectly comprehensible. Schoenberg +writes of “passing notes,” says there is no such thing as consonance +and dissonance, and “I have not been able to discover any principles +of harmony. Sincerity, self-expression, is all that the artist needs, +and he should say only what he must say” but Mr. Huneker points out +that he has founded an order out of his chaos, “that his madness is +very methodical. For one thing he abuses the interval of the fourth and +he enjoys juggling with the chord of the ninth. Vagabond harmonies, +in which the remotest keys lovingly hold hands do not prevent the +sensation of a central tonality somewhere--in the cellar, on the +roof, in the gutter, up in the sky.” Percy Grainger says he dreams of +“beatless” music without rhythm--at least academically speaking--but +he certainly does not write it. F. Balilla Pratella writes pages +condemning dance rhythms and still more pages elaborating a new theory +for marking time (which, I admit, is absolutely incomprehensible to me) +and publishes them as a preface to his _Musica Futurista_ (Bologna, +1912), a composition for orchestra, which is written, in spite of the +theories, and the fantastic time signatures, in the most engaging +dance rhythms. Nor does his disregard for fugue go so far as to make +him unfriendly to scale; the whole-tone scale prevails in this work. +His dislike for polyphony seems more sincere; there is a great deal of +homophonous effect. Leo Ornstein has admitted to me that his “system” +would be fully understood in a decade or two. As for Strawinsky +... how the public joyfully and rapturously takes to its heart his +dissonances, and even asks for more! + + +VII + +Vincent d’Indy, reported by Marcel Duchamp, said recently that the +philosophy of music is twenty years behind that of the other arts. + + +VIII + +The fact that Schoenberg has written a handbook of theory, explaining, +after a fashion, his method of composition has misled some people. +“Schoenberg is a learned musician,” writes Mr. Aldrich (“New York +Times,” December 5, 1915), “and his music is built up by processes +derived from methods handed down to the present by the learned of +the past, however widely the results may depart from those hitherto +accepted.... There results what he chooses to consider ‘harmony,’ the +outcome of a deliberate system, about which he theorizes and _has +written a book_” (the italics again are mine). Against this train of +reasoning (further on in the same article it becomes evident that Mr. +Aldrich is annoyed with Strawinsky because he has not done likewise) +it is pleasant to place the following paragraph from Chorley’s “Modern +German Music”: “Mozart, it will be recollected, totally and (for him) +seriously, declined to criticize himself and confess his habits of +composition. Many men have produced great works of art who have never +cultivated æsthetic conversation: nay, more, who have shrunk with a +secretly entertained dislike from those indefatigable persons whose +fancy it is ‘to peep and botanize’ in every corner of faëry land. It +cannot be said that the analytical spirit of the circle of Weimar, when +Goethe was its master-spirit did any great things for Music.” Do not +misunderstand Strawinsky’s silence (which has only been relative, after +all). It is sometimes as well to compose as to theorize. Some of the +great composers have let us see into their workshops (not that they +have all consistently followed out their own theories) and others have +not. In one pregnant paragraph Strawinsky has expressed himself (he is +speaking of _The Nightingale_): “I want to suggest neither situations +nor emotions, but simply to manifest, to express them. I think there is +in what are called ‘impressionist’ methods” (“Mr. Strawinsky, on the +other hand, is a musical impressionist from the start”: R. A. again) “a +certain amount of hypocrisy, or at least a tendency towards vagueness +and ambiguity. That I shun above all things, and that, perhaps, is the +reason why my methods differ as much from those of the impressionists +as they differ from academic conventional methods. Though I often find +it extremely hard to do so, I always aim at straightforward expression +in its simplest form. I have no use for ‘working-out’ in dramatic or +lyric music. The one essential thing is to feel and to convey one’s +feelings.” + +This idea of natural expression becomes associated in any great +composer’s mind with another idea, the horror of the _cliché_. Each new +giant desires to express himself without resorting to the thousand and +one formulas which have been more or less in use since the “golden age” +of music (whenever that was). Natural expression implies to a certain +extent the abandonment of the _cliché_, for, under this principle, +if a rule or a habit is weighed and found wanting it is immediately +discarded. + +“Routine (_cliché_) is highly esteemed and frequently required; in +musical ‘officialdom’ it is a _sine qua non_,” writes Busoni. “That +routine in music should exist at all, and furthermore that it can +be nominated as a condition in the musician’s bond, is another +proof of the narrow confines of our musical art. Routine signifies +the acquisition of a modicum of experience and art craft, and their +application to all cases which may occur; hence, there must be an +astounding number of analogous cases. Now I like to imagine a species +of art-praxis wherein each case should be a new one, an exception.” +Even so early a composer (using early in a loose sense) as Schumann +found it unnecessary, at times, to close a piece with the tonic; +and many other composers have disregarded the rule since, leaving +the ear hanging in the air, so to speak. Is there any more reason +why all pieces should end on the tonic than that all books should +end happily or all pictures be painted in black and white? In music +which Mozart wrote at the age of four there are chords of the second +(and they occur in music before Mozart). In books of the period +you can read of the horror with which ears at the beginning of the +nineteenth century received consecutive fifths. Some of the modern +French composers have disposed of the _cliché_ of a symphony in four +movements. Chausson, Franck, and Dukas have written symphonies in +three parts. What composer (even the most academic) ever followed the +letter of a precept if he found a better way of expressing himself? +Moussorgsky avoided _cliché_ as he would have avoided the plague. He +took all the short cuts possible. There are no preambles and addendas, +or other doddering concessions to scientific art in his music dramas +and his songs. He gives the words their natural accent and the voice +its natural inflections. Death is not always rewarded with blows on +the big drum. The composer sometimes expresses the end, quite simply, +in silence. In all the arts the horror of _cliché_ asserts itself +so violently indeed that we find Robert Ross (“Masks and Phases”) +assailing Walter Pater for such a fall from grace as the use of the +phrase, “rebellious masses of black hair.” Of course some small souls +are so busy defying _cliché_, with no adequate reason for doing so, +that they make themselves ridiculous. And as an example of this +preoccupation I may tell an anecdote related to me by George Moore. +“For a time,” he said, “Augusta Holmès was interested in an opera she +was composing, _La Montagne Noire_, to the exclusion of all other +subjects in conversation. She talked about it constantly and always +brought one point forward: all the characters were to sing with their +backs to the audience. That was her novel idea. She did not seem to +realize that, in itself, the innovation would not serve to make her +opera interesting.” Strawinsky’s horror of _cliché_ is by no means +abnormal. He does not break rules merely for the pleasure of shocking +the pedants. In each instance he has developed, quite naturally and +inevitably, the form out of his material. In _Petrouchka_, a ballet +with a Russian country fair as its background, he has harped on the +folk-dance tunes, the hurdy-gurdy manner, and, as befits this work, +there is no great break with tradition, except in the orchestration. +_The Firebird_, too, in spite of its fantasy and brilliance, is +perfectly understandable in terms of the chromatic scale. In _The +Sacrifice to the Spring_, on the other hand, unhampered by the chains +which a “story-ballet” (the fable of these “pictures of pagan Russia” +is entirely negligible) inevitably imply, he has awakened primitive +emotions by the use of barbaric rhythm, without any special regard for +melody or harmony, using the words in their academic senses. There +is no attempt made to begin or end with major thirds. Strawinsky was +perhaps the first composer to see that melody is of no importance in a +ballet. _Fireworks_ is impressionistic but it is no more so (although +the result is arrived at by a wholly dissimilar method) than _La Mer_ +of Debussy. But it is in his opera, _The Nightingale_, or his very +short pieces for string quartet, or his Japanese songs for voice and +small orchestra that the beast shows his fangs, so to speak. It is +in these pieces and in _The Sacrifice to the Spring_ that Strawinsky +has accomplished a process of elision, leaving out some of those +stupidities which have bored us at every concert of academic music +which we have attended. (You must realize how much your mind wanders +at a symphony concert. It is impossible to concentrate one’s complete +attention on the performance of a long work except at those times when +some new phrase or some new turn in the working-out of a theme strikes +the ear. There is so much of the music that is familiar, because it has +occurred in so much music before. If you hear tum-ti-tum you may be +certain it will be followed by ti-ti-ti and a good part of this sort +of thing falls on deaf ears.... There are those, I am forced to admit, +who can only concentrate on that which is perfectly familiar to them.) +As a matter of fact he gives our ears credit (by this time!) for the +ability to skip a few of the connecting links. Now this sort of elision +in painting has come to be the slogan of a school. Cézanne painted a +woman as he saw her; he made no attempt to explain her; that pleasure +he left for the spectator of his picture. He did not draw a fashion +plate. The successors of Cézanne (some of them) have gone much farther. +They draw us a few bones and expect us to reconstruct the woman, body +and soul, after the fashion of a professor of anatomy reconstructing an +ichthyosaurus. Strawinsky and some other modern musicians have gone as +far; they have left out the tum-ti-tums and twilly-wigs which connect +the pregnant phrases in their music.... This does not signify that they +do not _think_ them, sometimes, but it is not necessary for any one +with a receptive ear (not an _expectant_ ear, unless it be an ear which +expects to hear something pleasant!) to do so. In fact this kind of an +auditor appreciates these short cuts of composers, gives thanks to God +for them. Surprise is one of the keenest emotions that music has in its +power to give us (even Hadyn and Weber discovered that!). It is only +the pedants and the critics, who, after all, do not sit through all the +long symphonies, who are annoyed by these attempts at concentration and +condensation. (I say the pedants but I must include the Philistines. +It is really _cliché_ which makes certain music “popular.” The public +as a whole really prefers music based on _cliché_, with a melody in +which the end is foreordained almost from the first bar. Of course in +time public taste is changed.... The transition is slow ... but the +composer who follows public taste instead of leading it soon drops out +of hearing. The _cliché_ of to-day is not the _cliché_ of day before +yesterday. According to Philip Hale, Napoleon, then first consul [1800] +said to Luigi Cherubini, “I am very fond of Paisiello’s music; it is +gentle, peaceful. You have great talent, but your accompaniments are +too loud.” Cherubini replied, “Citizen Consul, I have conformed to the +taste of the French.” Napoleon persisted, “Your music is too loud; +let us talk of Paisiello’s which lulls me gently.” “I understand,” +answered Cherubini, “you prefer music that does not prevent you from +dreaming of affairs of state.”) Strawinsky, working gradually, not +with the intention to astonish but with no fear of doing so, dropping +superfluities, and all _cliché_ of the studio whatsoever, arrives +at a perfectly natural form of expression in his lyric drama, _The +Nightingale_, in which there is no working-out or development of +themes; the music is intended to comment upon, to fill with a bigger +meaning, the action as it proceeds, without resorting to tricks which +require mental effort on the part of the auditor. The composer does not +wish to burden him with any more mental effort than the mere listening +to the piece requires and he strikes to the soul with the poignancy of +his expression. (The foregoing may easily be misunderstood. It does not +mean necessarily that there is no polyphony, that there are no parts +leading hither and thither in the music of Strawinsky. It does not +mean that dissonance has become an end in itself with this composer. +It simply means that he has let his inspiration take the form natural +to it and has not tried to cramp his inspiration into proscribed +forms. There should be no more difficulty in understanding him than in +understanding Beethoven once one arrives at listening with unbiased +ears. The trouble is that too many of us have made up our minds not +to listen to anything which does not conform with our own precious +opinions.) + +At the risk of being misunderstood by some and for the sake of making +myself clearer to others I hazard a frivolous figure. Say that +Wagner’s formula for composition be represented by some expression; +I will choose the simple proverb, “Make hay while the sun shines.” +Humperdinck is content to change a single detail of this formula. He +says, musically speaking, “Make _wheat_ while the sun shines.” Richard +Strauss makes a more complete inversion. His paraphrase would suggest +something like this, “Make brass while the band brays.” Strawinsky, +wearied of the whole business (as was Debussy before him; genius does +not paraphrase) uses only two words of the formula ... say “make” and +“sun.” Later even these are negligible, as each new composer makes his +own laws and his own formulas. The infinity of it! In time the work of +Strawinsky will establish a _cliché_ to be scorned by a new generation +(scorned in the sense that it will not be imitated, except by inferior +men). + +That his music is vibrant and beautiful we may be sure and it has +happened that all of it has been appreciated by a very worth-while +public. He has done what Benedetto Croce in his valuable work, +“Æsthetic,” demands of the artist. He has expressed himself ... for +beauty is expression. “Artists,” says this writer, “while making a +verbal pretence of agreeing, or yielding a feigned obedience to them, +have always disregarded (these) _laws of styles_. Every true work of +art has violated some established class and upset the ideas of the +critics who have been obliged to enlarge the number of classes, until +finally even this enlargement has proved too narrow, owing to the +appearance of new works of art, which are naturally followed by new +scandals, new upsettings, and--new enlargements.” + +“It must not be forgotten,” says Egon Wellesz (“Schoenberg and Beyond” +in “The Musical Quarterly,” Otto Kinkeldey’s translation), “that in art +there are no ‘eternal laws’ and rules. Each period of history has its +own art, and the art of each period has its own rules. There are times +of which one might say that every work which was not in accord with the +rules was bad or amateurish. These are the times in which fixed forms +exist, to which all artists hold fast, merely varying the content. +Then there are periods when artists break through and shatter the old +forms. The greatness of their thoughts can no longer be confined within +the old limits. (Think of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and the Symphonie +Fantastique of Berlioz.) There arises a category of art works whose +power and beauty can be _felt_ only and not _understood_. For this +reason an audience that knows nothing of rules will enthuse over works +of this kind much sooner than the average musician who looks for the +rules and their observance.” + +Remember that Hanslick called _Tristan und Isolde_ “an abomination of +sense and language” and Chorley wrote “I have never been so blanked, +pained, wearied, _insulted_ even (the word is not too strong), by a +work of pretension as by ... _Tannhäuser_....” “Fortunately,” I quote +Benedetto Croce again, “no arduous remarks are necessary to convince +ourself that pictures, poetry, and every work of art, produce no +effects save on souls prepared to receive them.” + +The clock continues to make its hands go round, so fast indeed that +it becomes increasingly difficult to keep track of its course. For +example, just before his death, John F. Runciman in “Another Ode to +Discord” (“The New Music Review,” April, 1916) seemed to present an +entirely new front. Here is a sample passage, “We have grown used to +dissonances and our ears no longer require the momentary rest afforded +by frequent concords; if a discord neither demands preparation nor +resolution, and if it sounds beautiful and is expressive, there is +no reason on earth why a piece of music should not consist wholly +of a series of discords.... From Monteverde to Scriabine the line +is unbroken, each successive generation growing bolder in attacking +dissonances and still bolder in the manner of quitting them. I heard +a gentleman give a recital of his own pianoforte works not long ago. +They seemed to consist entirely of minor seconds--B and C struck +together--and the effect to my mind was excruciatingly abominable. +But that is how Bach’s music, Beethoven’s, Wagner’s, struck their +contemporaries; and heaven knows what we shall get accustomed to in +time. One thing is certain--that the most daring modern spirit is only +following in the steps of the mightiest masters....” + +We may be on the verge of a still greater revolution in art than any +through which we have yet passed; new banners may be unfurled, and new +strongholds captured. I admit that the idea gives me pleasure. Try to +admit as much to yourself. Go hear the new music; listen to it and see +if you can’t enjoy it. Perhaps you can’t. At any rate you will find in +time that you won’t listen to second-rate imitations of the giant works +of the past any longer. Your ears will make progress in spite of you +and I shouldn’t wonder at all if five years more would make Schoenberg +and Strawinsky and Ornstein a trifle old-fashioned.... The Austrian +already has a little of the academy dust upon him. + + +_New York, April 16, 1916._ + + + + +A New Principle in Music + + + + +A New Principle in Music + + +Although Igor Strawinsky plainly proclaimed himself a genius in _The +Firebird_ (1909-10), it was in _Petrouchka_ (1910-11) that he began the +experiment which established a new principle in music. In these “scènes +burlesques” he discovered the advantages of a new use of the modern +orchestra, completely upsetting the old academic ideas about “balance +of tone,” and proving to his own satisfaction the value of “pure tone,” +in the same sense that the painter speaks of pure colour. And in this +work he broke away from the standards not only of Richard Strauss, the +Wagner follower, but also of such innovators as Modeste Moussorgsky and +Claude Debussy. + +Strauss, following Wagner’s theory of the _leit-motiv_, rounded out +the form of the tone-poem, carried the principle of representation in +music a few steps farther than his master, gave new colours to old +instruments, and broadened the scope of the modern orchestra so that +it might include new ones (in one of his symphonies Gustav Mahler +was content with 150 men!). Moussorgsky (although his work preceded +that of Strauss, the general knowledge of it is modern), working +along entirely different lines, strove for truthful utterance and +achieved a mode of expression which usually seems inevitable. Debussy +endowed music with novel tints derived from the extensive, and almost +exclusive, use of what is called the whole-tone scale, and instead of +forcing his orchestra to make more noise he constantly repressed it (in +all of _Pelléas et Mélisande_ there is but one climax of sound and in +_l’Après-midi d’un Faune_ and his other orchestral works he is equally +continent in the use of dynamics). + +Igor Strawinsky has not been deaf to the blandishments of these +composers. He has used the _leit-motiv_ (sparingly) in both _The +Firebird_ and _Petrouchka_. He abandoned it in _The Sacrifice to +the Spring_ (1913) and in _The Nightingale_ (1914). His powers of +representation are as great as those of Strauss; it is only necessary +to recall the music of the bird in _The Firebird_, his orchestral +piece, _Fireworks_, which received warm praise from a manufacturer of +pyrotechnics, and the street organ music in _Petrouchka_. Later he +conceived the mission of music to be something different. “La musique +est trop bête,” he said once ironically, “pour exprimer autre chose que +la musique.” In such an extraordinary work as _The Nightingale_ we find +him making little or no attempt at representation. The bird does not +sing like the little brown warbler; instead Strawinsky has endeavoured +to write music which would give the _feeling_ of the bird’s song and +the effect it made on the people in his lyric drama to the auditors +in the stalls of the opera house. As for Strauss’s use of orchestral +colour the German is the merest tyro when compared to the Russian. +There is some use of the whole-tone scale in _The Firebird_, and +elsewhere in Strawinsky, but it is not a predominant use of it. In this +“conte dansé” he also suggests the _Pelléas et Mélisande_ of Debussy +in his continent use of sound and the mystery and esotericism of his +effect. Strawinsky is more of an expert than Moussorgsky; he handles +his medium more freely (has any one ever handled it better?) but he +still preaches the older Russian doctrine of truth of expression, a +doctrine which implies the curt dismissal of all idea of padding. + +But all these composers and their contemporaries, and the composers +who came before them, have one quality in common; they all use the +orchestra of their time, or a bigger one. Strauss, to be sure, +introduces a number of new instruments, but he still utilizes a vast +number of violins and violas massed against the other instruments, +diminishing in number according to the volume of sound each makes. He +divides his strings continually, of course; they do not all play alike +as the violins, say, in _Il Barbiere di Siviglia_, but they often all +play at once. + +Strawinsky experimented at first with the full orchestra and he even +utilized it in such late works as _Petrouchka_ and _The Nightingale_. +However, in his search for “pure tone” he used it in a new way. In +_Petrouchka_, for example, infrequently you will hear more than _one +of each instrument at a time_ and frequently two, or at most three, +instruments playing simultaneously will be sufficient to give his idea +form. The entire second scene of this mimed drama, is written for solo +piano, occasionally combined with a single other instrument. At other +times in the action the bassoon or the cornet, even the triangle has +the stage. And when he wishes to achieve his most complete effects he +is careful not to use more than seven or eight instruments, and _only +one of each_. + +He experimented still further with this principle in his Japanese +songs, for voice and small orchestra (1912). The words are by Akahito, +Mazatsumi, and Tsaraiuki. I have not heard these songs with orchestral +accompaniment (the piano transcription was made by the composer +himself) but I may take the judgment of those who have. I am told that +they are of an indescribable beauty, and instinct with a new colour, +a colour particularly adapted to the oriental naïveté of the lyrics. +The orchestra, to accompany a soprano, consists of two flutes (one +a little flute), two clarinets (the second a bass clarinet), piano +(an instrument which Strawinsky almost invariably includes in his +orchestration), two violins, viola and ’cello. This form of chamber +music, of course, is not rare. Chausson’s violin concerto, with chamber +orchestra, and Schoenberg’s _Pierrot Lunaire_ instantly come to mind, +but Strawinsky did not stop with chamber music. He applied his new +principle to the larger forms. + +In his newest work, _The Village Weddings_, which I believe Serge +de Diaghilew hopes to produce, his principle has found its ultimate +expression, I am told by his friend, Ernest Ansermet, conductor of the +Russian Ballet in America and to whom Strawinsky dedicated his three +pieces for string quartet. The last note is dry on the score of this +work, and it is therefore quite possible to talk about it although no +part of it has yet been performed publicly. According to Mr. Ansermet +there is required an orchestra of forty-five men, each a virtuoso, _no +two of whom play the same instrument_ (to be sure there are two violins +but one invariably plays pizzicato, the other invariably bows). There +are novelties in the band but all the conventional instruments are +there including, you may be sure, a piano and an infinite variety +of woodwinds, which always play significant rôles in Strawinsky’s +orchestration. And Mr. Ansermet says that in this work Strawinsky +has achieved effects such as have only been dreamed of by composers +hitherto.... I can well believe him. + +He has made another innovation, following, in this case, an idea +of Diaghilew’s. When that impresario determined on a production of +Rimsky-Korsakow’s opera, _The Golden Cock_, during the summer of +1914 he conceived a performance with two casts, one choregraphic +and the other vocal. Thus Mme. Dobrovolska sang the coloratura rôle +of the Queen of Shemakhan while Mme. Karsavina danced the part most +brilliantly on her toes; M. Petrov sang the rôle of King Dodon, +which was enacted by Adolf Bolm, etc. In order to accomplish this +feat Mr. Diaghilew was obliged to make the singers a part of the +decoration. Nathalie Gontcharova, who has been called in to assist +in the production of _The Village Weddings_, devised as part of her +stage setting two tiers of seats, one on either side of the stage, +extending into the flies after the fashion of similar benches used +at the performance of an oratorio. The singers (principals and chorus +together) clad in magenta gowns and caps, all precisely similar, sat +on these seats during the performance and, after a few seconds, they +became quite automatically a part of the decoration. The action took +place in the centre of the stage and the dancers not only mimed their +rôles but also opened and closed their mouths as if they were singing. +The effect was thoroughly diverting and more than one serious person +was heard to declare that the future of opera had been solved, although +Mme. Rimsky-Korsakow, as she had on a similar occasion when the Russian +Ballet had produced Fokine’s version of _Scheherazade_, protested. + +Rimsky-Korsakow wrote his opera to be sung in the ordinary fashion, +and, in so far as this matters, it was perhaps a desecration to perform +it in any other manner. However, quite beyond the fact that very large +audiences were hugely delighted with _The Golden Cock_ in its new form, +these performances served to fire Strawinsky with the inspiration for +his new work. He intends _The Village Weddings_ to be given precisely +in this manner. It is an opera, the rôles of which are to be sung by +artists who sit still while the figures of the ballet will enact them. +The words, I am told, are entirely derived from Russian folk stories +and ballads, pieced together by the composer himself, and the action is +to be like that of a marionette show in which the characters are worked +by strings from above. It may also be stated on the same authority that +the music, while embracing new tone colours and dramatic effects, is as +tuneful as any yet set on paper by this extraordinary young man; the +songs have a true folk flavour. The whole, it is probable, will make +as enchanting a stage entertainment as any which this composer has yet +contrived. + +It is not only folk-tunes but popular songs as well that fascinate Igor +Strawinsky. Ernest Ansermet collected literally hundreds of examples +of American ragtime songs and dances to take back to the composer, +and he pointed out to me how Strawinsky had used similar specimens +in the past. For example, the barrel organ solo in the first scene +of _Petrouchka_ is a popular French song of several seasons ago, _La +Jambe de Bois_ (a song now forbidden in Paris); the final wedding music +in _The Firebird_ is an _adagio_ version of a popular Russian song, +with indecent words. He sees beauty in these popular tunes, too much +beauty to be allowed to go to waste. In the same spirit he has taken +the melodies of two Lanner waltzes for the dance between the Ballerina +and the Moor in the third scene of _Petrouchka_. It would not surprise +me at all to discover _Hello Frisco_ bobbing up in one of his future +works. After all turn about is fair play; the popular composers have +dug gold mines out of the classics. + +Consistent, certainly, is Strawinsky’s delight in clowns and music +halls--the burlesque and the eccentric. He has written a ballet for +four clowns, and Ansermet showed me one day an arrangement for four +hands of three pieces, for small orchestra, in _style music hall_, +dated 1914. We gave what we smilingly referred to as the “first +American audition” on the grand pianoforte in his hotel room. I +played the base, not a matter of any particular difficulty in the +first number, a polka, because the first bar was repeated to the +end. This polka, I found very amusing and we played it over several +times. The valse, which followed, reminded me of the Lanner number +in _Petrouchka_. The suite closed with a march, dedicated to Alfred +Casella.... The pieces would delight any audience, from that of the +Palace Theatre, to that of the concerts of the Symphony Society of New +York. + + +_New York, February 6, 1916._ + + + + +Leo Ornstein + + “_the only true blue, genuine Futurist composer alive._” + + James Huneker. + + + + +Leo Ornstein + + +The amazing Leo Ornstein!... I should have written the amazing Leo +Ornsteins for “there are many of them and each one of them is one.” +Ornstein himself has a symbol for this diversity; some of his music he +signs “Vannin.” He has told me that the signature is automatic: when +Vannin writes he signs; when Ornstein writes _he_ signs. But it is +not alone in composing that there are many Ornsteins; there are many +pianists as well. One Ornstein paints his tones with a fine soft brush; +the other smears on his colours with a trowel. In his sentimental +treatment of triviality he has scarcely a competitor on the serious +concert stage (unless it be Fanny Bloomfield-Zeisler). Is this the +Caliban, one asks, who conceived and who executes _The Wild Men’s +Dance_? The softer Ornstein is less original than his comrade, more +imitative.... I have been told that Jews are always imitative in art, +that there are no great Jewish composers. Wagner? Well, Wagner was half +a Jew, perhaps. Certainly there is imitation in Ornstein, but so was +there in the young Beethoven, the young Debussy.... + +Recently I went to hear Ornstein play under a misconception. I thought +that he, with an announced violinist, was going to perform his +anarchistic sonata for violin and piano, opus 31. They did perform +one of his sonatas but it was an earlier opus, 26, I think. At times, +while I listened it seemed to me that nothing so beautiful had been +done in this form since César Franck’s sonata. The first movement had +a rhapsodic character that was absolutely successful in establishing a +mood. The music soared; it did not seem confined at all. It achieved +perfectly the effect of improvisation. The second part was even finer, +and the scherzo and finale only less good. But this was no new idiom. I +looked again and again at my programme; again and again at the man on +the piano stool. Was this not Harold Bauer playing Ravel?... One theme +struck me as astonishingly like Johnson’s air in the last act of _The +Girl of the Golden West_. There was a good use made of the whole-tone +scale and its attendant harmonies, which sounded strangely in our ears +a few seasons past, and a ravishing series of figurations and runs made +one remember that Debussy had described falling water in a similar +fashion. + +This over the pianist became less himself--so far as I had become +acquainted with him to this time--than ever. He played a banal +barcarole of Rubinstein’s; to be sure he almost made it sound like an +interesting composition; he played a scherzino of his own that any one +from Schütt to Moszkowski might have signed; he played something of +Grieg’s which may have pleased Mr. Finck and two or three ladies in the +audience but which certainly left me cold; and he concluded this group +with a performance of Liszt’s arrangement of the waltz from Gounod’s +_Faust_. Thereupon there was so much applause that he came back and +played his scherzino again. His répertoire in this _genre_ was probably +too limited to admit of his adding a fresh number.... At this point I +arose and left the hall, more in wonder than in indignation. + +Was this the musician who had been reviled and hissed? Was this the +pianist and composer whom Huneker had dubbed the only real futurist in +modern music? It was not the Ornstein I myself had heard a few weeks +previously striking the keyboards with his fists in the vociferous +measures of _The Wild Men’s Dance_; it was not the colour painter of +the two _Impressions of Notre Dame_; it was not the Ornstein who in +a dark corner of Pogliani’s glowed with glee over the possibility of +dividing and redividing the existing scale into eighth, sixteenth, and +twenty-fourth tones.... This was another Ornstein and in searching my +memory I discovered him to be the oldest Ornstein of all. I remembered +five years back when I was assistant to the musical critic of the “New +York Times” and had been sent to hear a boy prodigy play on a Sunday +evening at the New Amsterdam Theatre. Concerts by serious artists at +that period seldom took place outside of recognized concert halls, nor +did they occur on Sunday nights. But there was something about this +concert that impressed itself upon me and I wrote more than the usual +perfunctory notice on this occasion. Here is my account of what I think +must have been Leo Ornstein’s first public appearance (March 5, 1911), +dug from an old scrap book: + +“The New Amsterdam Theatre is a strange place for a recital of +pianoforte music, but one was held there last evening, when Leo +Ornstein, the latest wunderkind to claim metropolitan attention, +appeared before a very large audience to contribute his interpretation +of a programme which would have tested any fully grown-up talent. + +“It began with Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, included Beethoven’s +_Sonata Appassionata_, six Chopin numbers, and finally Rubinstein’s +D minor concerto, in which young Ornstein was assisted by the Volpe +Symphony Orchestra. To say that this boy has great talent would be to +mention the obvious, but to say that as yet he is ripe for such matters +as he undertook last night would be stretching the truth. It should be +stated, however, that his command of tone colour is already great and +that his technique is usually adequate for the demands which the music +made, although in some passages in the final movement of the Beethoven +sonata his strength seemed to desert him.” + +I never even heard of Leo Ornstein again after this concert at the New +Amsterdam (his exploits in Europe escaped my eyes and ears) until he +gave the famous series of concerts at the Bandbox Theatre in January +and February of 1915, a series of concerts which really startled +musical New York and even aroused orchestral conductors, in some +measure, out of their lethargic method of programme-making. So far +as he was able Ornstein constructed his programmes entirely from the +“music of the future,” and patrons of piano recitals were astonished +to discover that a pianist could give four concerts without playing +any music by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt, or +Schubert.... Since these occasions Ornstein has been considered the +high apostle of the new art in America, as the post-futurist composer, +and as a pianist of great technical powers and a luscious tone +quality (it does not seem strange that these attributes are somewhat +exaggerated in so young a man). + +Nearly a year later (December 15, 1915, to be exact) Ornstein +gave another concert at the Cort Theatre in New York. Here are my +impressions of that occasion, noted down shortly after: + +“Leo Ornstein, a few years ago a poor Russian Jew music student, is +rapidly by way of becoming an institution. His concerts are largely +attended and he is even taken seriously by the press, especially in +England. + +“He slouched on the stage, stooping, in his usual listless manner, his +long arms hanging limp at his sides like those of a gorilla. His head +is beautiful, crowned with an overflowing crop of black hair, soulful +eyes, a fine mask. There are pauses without expression but sometimes, +notably when he plays _The Wild Men’s Dance_, his face lights up with a +sort of sardonic appreciation. He has discarded his sack cloth coat for +a velvet jacket of similar cut. + +“He began with two lovely impressionistic things by Vannin (Sanborn +says that this is ‘programme for Ornstein’), _The Waltzers_ and +_Night_. A long sonata by Cyril Scott (almost entirely in the +whole-tone scale, sounding consequently like Debussy out of Bach, +for there was a fugue and a smell of the academy) followed. Ravel’s +_Oiseaux Tristes_ twittered their sorrows prettily in the treble, and a +sonatina by the same composer seemed negligible. Albeniz’s _Almeria_, a +section of the twelve-parted _Iberia_, was a Spanish picture of worth. +Ornstein followed with his own pieces, _Improvisata_, a vivid bit of +colour and rhythm, and _Impressions of the Thames_, in which an attempt +was made to picture the heavy smoking barges, the labours on the river, +the shrill sirens of the tugs. The limited (is it, I wonder?) medium +of the piano made all this sound rather Chinese. But some got the +picture. A few laughed. _The Wild Men’s Dance_ convulsed certain parts +of the audience. It always does (but this may well be hysteria); others +were struck with wonder by its thrill. Certainly a powerful massing of +notes, creating wild effects in tone, and a compelling rhythm. In the +_Fairy Pictures_ of Korngold, which closed the programme, Ornstein was +not at his best; nor, for that matter, was Korngold. They were written +when the composer was a very young boy and they are not particularly +original, spontaneous, or beautiful. The difficulties exist for the +player rather than for the hearer.... Ornstein did not bring out their +humour. Humour, as yet, is not an attribute of his playing. He has +always imparted to the piano a beautiful tone; his touch is almost as +fine as Pachmann’s. But his powers are ripening in every direction. +Formerly he dwelt too long on nuances, fussed too much with details. +His style is becoming broader. His technique has always been ample. +There is no doubt but that he will become a power in the music world.” + +Some time later I met Leo Ornstein and we talked over a table. He is +fluid in conversation and while he talks he clasps and unclasps his +hands.... He referred to his début at the New Amsterdam. “My ambition +then was to play the concertos of Rubinstein and Tschaikowsky ... and +I satisfied it. Soon after that concert I went abroad.... Suddenly the +new thing came to me, and I began to write and play in the style which +has since become identified with my name. It was music that I felt and +I realized that I had become myself at last, although at first, to be +frank, it horrified me as much as it has since horrified others. Mind +you, when I took the leap I had never seen any music by Schoenberg +or Strawinsky. I was unaware that there was such a generality as +‘futurism.’ + +“I spent some time in Norway and Vienna, where I met Leschetitzky” +(this incident is referred to elsewhere in this volume) “and then I +went down to Paris. I was very poor.... I met Harold Bauer and one day +I went to play for him. We had a furious argument all day. He couldn’t +understand my music. But he asked me to come again the next day, +and I did. This time Walter Morse Rummel was there and he suggested +that Calvocoressi would be interested in me. So he gave me a note to +Calvocoressi. + +“Calvocoressi is a Greek but he speaks all languages. He read my +note of introduction and asked me if I spoke French or English. We +spoke a little Russian together. Then he asked me to play. While I +played his eyes snapped and he uttered several sudden ejaculations. +‘Play that again,’ he said, when I had concluded one piece. Later +on he asked some of his friends to hear me.... At the time he was +giving a series of lectures on modern musicians, Strauss, Debussy, +Dukas, Ravel, Schoenberg, and Strawinsky, and he included _me_ in the +list! I illustrated two of his lectures and after I had concluded +my performance of the music of other composers he asked me to play +something of my own, which I did....” Ornstein looked amusingly +rueful. “The auditors were not actually rude. How could they be when +I followed Calvocoressi? But they giggled a little. Later on in London +they did more than giggle. + +“I went to London because my means were getting low. I had almost no +money at all, as a matter of fact.... In London I found Calvocoressi’s +influence of great value (he had already written an article about me) +and some people at Oxford had heard me in Paris. These friends helped; +besides I played the Steinway piano and the Steinways finally gave me a +concert in Steinway Hall. At my first concert (this was in the spring +of 1914) I played music by other composers. At my second concert, +devoted to my own compositions, I might have played anything. I +couldn’t hear the piano myself. The crowd whistled and howled and even +threw handy missiles on the stage ... but that concert made me famous,” +Ornstein wound up with a smile. + +He is a hard-working youth, serious, it would seem, to the heart. His +published music is numbered into the thirties and his répertoire is +extensive. He spends a great deal of time working hard on the music of +a bygone age, although he finds it no stimulation for this one, but to +be taken seriously as a pianist he is obliged to prove to melomaniacs +that he has the equipment to play the classic composers. Of all the +compositions that he learns, however, he complains of his own as the +most difficult to memorize; a glance at _The Wild Men’s Dance_ or more +particularly at a page of his second sonata for violin and piano will +convince any one of the truth of this assertion. The chords will prove +strangers to many a well-trained eye. I wonder if so uncannily gifted +a sight reader as Walter Damrosch, who can play an orchestral score on +the piano at sight, could read this music? + +Of his principles of composition the boy says only that he writes what +he feels. He has no regard for the rules, although he has studied them +enough to break them thoroughly. He thinks there is an underlying basis +of theory for his method of composition, which may be formulated later. +It is not his purpose to formulate it. He is sincere in his art. + +Once he said to me, “I hate cleverness. I don’t want to be clever. I +hate to be called clever. I am not clever. I don’t like clever people. +Art that is merely clever is not art at all.” + +With Busoni and Schoenberg he believes that there are no discords, only +chords and chords ... and that there are many combinations of notes, +“millions of them” which have not yet been devised. + +“When I feel that the existing enharmonic scale is limiting me I shall +write in quarter tones. In time I think the ear can be trained to +grasp eighth tones. Instruments only exist to perform music and new +instruments will be created to meet the new need. It can be met now on +the violin or in the voice. The piano, of course, is responsible for +the rigidity of the present scale.” + +Ornstein never rewrites. If his inspiration does not come the first +time it never comes. He does not try to improve a failure. His method +is to write as much as he can spontaneously on one day, and to pick the +composition up where he left off on the next. + +His opinions of other modern composers are interesting: he considers +Ravel greater than Debussy, and speaks with enthusiasm about _Daphnis +et Chloë_. He has played music by Satie in private but does not find +it “stimulating or interesting.” ... Schoenberg ... “the last of the +academics ... all brain, no spirit. His music is mathematical. He does +not feel it. Korngold’s pieces are pretty but he has done nothing +important. Scriabine was a great theorist who never achieved his goal. +He helped others on. But Strawinsky is the most stimulating and +interesting of all the modern composers. He feels what he writes.” + +Most of Ornstein’s music is inspired by things about him, some of it by +abstract ideas. His social conscience is awake. He wanted to call _The +Wild Men’s Dance_, _Liberty_ (“I attempted to write music which would +dance itself, which did not require a dancer”), but finally decided +on the more symbolic title. “I am known as a musical anarch now,” he +explained to me, “I could not name a piece of music _Liberty_--at least +not _that_ piece--without associating myself in the public mind with a +certain social propaganda.” Just the same he means the propaganda. In +the _Dwarf Suite_ he gives us a picture of the lives of the struggling +Russian Jews. These dwarfs are symbols.... He is fond of abstract +titles. He often plays his _Three Moods_. “In Boston they did not like +my _Three Moods_. They found my _Anger_ too unrestrained; it was vulgar +to express oneself so freely.... But there is such a thing as anger. +Why should it not find artistic expression? Besides it is a very good +contrast to _Peace_ and _Joy_ which enclose it.” The _Impressions of +the Thames_ I have already referred to. With the two _Impressions of +Notre Dame_ it stands as his successful experiment with impressionism. +The _Notre Dame_ pictures include gargoyles and, of course, bells.... +I have not heard the violin and piano sonata, opus 31. Nor can I play +it. Nor can I derive any very adequate idea of how it sounds from a +perusal of the score. Strange music this.... Some time ago some one +sent Ornstein the eight songs of Richard Strauss, Opus 49. The words +of three of these songs (_Wiegenliedchen_, _In Goldener Fülle_, and +_Waldseligkeit_) struck him and he made settings for them. Compare +them with Strauss and you will find the Bavarian’s music scented with +lavender. “In the _Wiegenliedchen_ Strauss gives you a picture of +the woman rocking the cradle for his accompaniment. I have tried to +go further, tried to express the feelings in the woman’s mind, her +hopes for the child when it is grown, her fears. I have tried to get +_underneath_.” But the _Berceuse_ in Ornstein’s _Nine Miniatures_ is +as simple an expression as the lover of Ethelbert Nevin’s style could +wish. Not all of Ornstein’s music is careless of tradition. He was +influenced in the beginning by many people. His _Russian Suite_ is very +pretty. Most of it is like Tschaikowsky. These suites will prove (if +any one wants it proved) that Ornstein can write conventional melody. + +Ornstein has also written a composition for orchestra entitled _The +Faun_, which Henry Wood had in mind for performance before the war. +It has not yet been played and I humbly suggest it to our resident +conductors, together with Albeniz’s _Catalonia_, Schoenberg’s _Five +Pieces_, and Strawinsky’s _Sacrifice to the Spring_. + +Leo Ornstein was born in 1895 at Krementchug, near Odessa. He is +consequently in his twenty-first year. He is already a remarkable +pianist, one of the very few who may be expected to achieve a position +in the front rank. His compositions have astonished the musical world. +Some of them have even pleased people. Whatever their ultimate value +they have certainly made it a deal easier for concert-goers to listen +to what are called “discords” with equanimity. His music is a modern +expression, untraditional, and full of a strange seething emotion; no +calculation here. And like the best painting and literature of the +epoch it vibrates with the unrest of the period which produced the +great war. + + +_June 14, 1916._ + + +THE END + + + + +[Illustration] + + +“BORZOI” stands for the best in literature in all its branches--drama +and fiction, poetry and art. “BORZOI” also stands for unusually +pleasing book-making. + +BORZOI Books are good books and there is one for every taste worthy of +the name. A few are briefly described on the next page. Mr. Knopf will +be glad to see that you are notified regularly of new and forthcoming +BORZOI Books if you will send him your name and address for that +purpose. He will also see that your local dealer is supplied. + + ADDRESS THE BORZOI + 220 WEST FORTY-SECOND STREET + NEW YORK + + + + +THE NEW BORZOI BOOKS + +_Published by_ ALFRED A. KNOPF + + + TALES OF THE PAMPAS By W. H. Hudson, author of “Green + Mansions.” Including what Edward Garnett calls “the finest + short story in English.” Three-color jacket. $1.25 + + A DRAKE! BY GEORGE! By John Trevena. A perfectly + delightful tale of Devonshire, with plot and humor a-plenty. $1.50 + + THE CRUSHED FLOWER From the Russian of Leonid Andreyev. + Three novelettes and some great short stories by this master. $1.50 + + JOURNALISM VERSUS ART By Max Eastman. A brilliant + and searching analysis of what is wrong with our magazine + writing and illustrations. Many pictures of unusual interest. $1.00 + + MODERN RUSSIAN HISTORY From the Russian of Alexander Kornilov. + The only work in English that comes right down to the present + day. Two volumes, boxed, per set. $5.00 + + THE RUSSIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING From the Russian of Alexandre + Benois, with an introduction by Christian Brinton and + thirty-two full-page plates. The only survey in English. $3.00 + + SUSSEX GORSE By Sheila Kaye-Smith. A wonderfully vigorous and + powerful novel of Sussex. A really masterly book. $1.50 + + RUSSIA’S MESSAGE By William English Walling, with 31 + illustrations. A new and revised edition of this most + important work. $2.00 + + WAR From the Russian of Michael Artzibashef, author of + “Sanine.” A four-act play of unusual power and strength. $1.00 + + MORAL From the German of Ludwig Thoma. A three-act comedy that + is unlike anything ever attempted in English. $1.00 + + MOLOCH By Beulah Marie Dix. Probably the most thrilling play + ever written about war. $1.00 + + THE INSPECTOR-GENERAL From the Russian of Nicolai Gogol, + author of “Taras Bulba.” The first adequate version in English + of this masterpiece of comedy. $1.00 + + THE SHAVING OF SHAGPAT A handsome holiday edition of George + Meredith’s Arabian Entertainment. With fifteen beautiful + plates and an introduction by George Eliot. Quarto. $5.00 + + +_All prices are net._ + +220 WEST FORTY-SECOND STREET, NEW YORK + + * * * * * + + + + +Transcriber’s Note + +New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the +public domain. + +Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Hyphenation +was standardized. + +Spelling was retained as in the original except for the following +changes: + + Page 44: “Greig’s _Peer Gynt_” “Grieg’s _Peer Gynt_” + Page 73: “_l’Heure Espagnole_” “_L’heure Espagnole_” + Page 77: “colour of Zurburan” “colour of Zurbaran” + Page 77: “Juan de Juares” “Juan de Juarez” + Page 84: “_Fantasy_ of Farrega” “_Fantasy_ of Tárrega” + Page 136: “oder Der misverstandene” “oder Der missverstandene” + Page 178: “is a _pointe de depart_” “is a _point de départ_” + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75908 *** |